December 03, 2013
We will
know in the coming months whether the current “second chance” roadmap to
constitutional reform in Egypt achieves that transition to democratic
legitimacy that was mismanaged in the two years after the overthrow of the
Hosni Mubarak regime. Equally significant in the short term is the current
tension in Egypt revolving around the growing resistance to the transitional
government’s new laws restricting public demonstrations and allowing civilians
to be tried in military courts.
Will we
see popular forces that brought down the Mubarak government mobilize yet again
to oppose the current government’s draconian laws that aim to control and
stifle political protests? It is not yet clear if those demonstrators who have
taken to the streets in half a dozen Egyptian cities in the past few days
represent a wide cross section of the Egyptian population, or only a small
stratum of activist progressives. Will Egypt now see its fourth popular revolt
against autocracy in the past three years?
The
current opposition to the transitional government’s harsh laws and rough
behavior was boosted Thursday night around 10 p.m. Cairo time when Interior
Ministry police forces stormed the home of Alaa Abdel Fattah, a prominent
Egyptian blogger and democracy activist who had been arrested several times
since 2006 under each of the last few Egyptian regimes. The police did not even
bother to obtain a search warrant, and even though Abdel Fattah had publicly
declared that he would turn himself in on Saturday, and confirmed this with a
telegram and registered letter to the Public Prosecutor. The police
nevertheless attacked his home, beat him and his wife Manal, took both their
computers and telephones, and now hold him in detention.
He and
April 6th Movement founder Ahmed Maher, who was also arrested, have received
the most publicity and have triggered growing protests in the past few days,
but their cases are symptomatic of a much deeper problem in Egypt that pertains
to the persistent curtailment of citizen rights by the government. All
governments seem to do this, from Mubarak to the first transitional government
led by the armed forces, to the Muslim Brotherhood government and now back to
the second military-led transitional government. Yet Egyptians continue to
fight back against such shows of autocratic rule, which in the last week has
included arresting dozens of demonstrators, subjecting them to beatings and
sexual harassment, torture, firing into peaceful demonstrations in universities
and killing students, and sentencing girls and young women to jail terms of up
to 14 years for demonstrating in public.
One can
only be heartened by the determination of Egyptian citizens and activists to
resist the chronic desire of Egypt’s rulers to maintain their citizens in a
state of political and personal docility. The twin legacies of the rule of Arab
countries by unelected and unaccountable military men and the insistence by
Arab citizens on enjoying their full human and civil rights have been
continuously confronting each other in Egypt in recent years, especially since
2010. This struggle between the rule of old men with guns and citizens with
constitutional rights remains the central battle across the entire Arab world.
Alaa Abdel Fattah’s statement on his intent to turn himself into the police
testifies powerfully to why activists and ordinary citizens continue to
struggle and even die for their rights (thanks to novelist Ahdaf Soueif for her
translation). Speaking for several hundred million Arabs, in my view, he notes:
“That I
do not recognize the anti-protest law that the people have brought down as
promptly as they brought down the monument to the military’s massacres—
“That the
legitimacy of the current regime collapsed with the first drop of blood shed in
front of the Republican Guard Club—
“That any
possibility of saving this legitimacy vanished when the ruling four (Sisi,
Beblawi, Ibrahim and Mansour) committed war crimes during the break-up of the
Rabaa sit-in—
“That the
Public Prosecutor’s Office displayed crass subservience when it provided legal
cover for the widest campaign of indiscriminate administrative detention in our
modern history, locking up young women, injured people, old people and
children, and holding in evidence against them balloons and T-shirts—
“That the
clear corruption in the judiciary is to be seen in the overly harsh sentences
against students whose crime was their anger at the murder of their comrades,
set against light sentences and acquittals for the uniformed murderers of those
same young people.”
These are
the battle lines of modern Arab statehood and citizenship that have defined our
region for over half a century. In the continuing struggle between old men with
guns and citizen activists brandishing their constitutional rights, there is no
question that constitutionalism must triumph, and the suffocating, humiliating
modern Arab legacy of military rule must end. Once again, we look to Egypt to
shape and resolve this battle.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large
of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy
and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut,
Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2013 Rami G. Khouri --
distributed by Agence Global