March 30, 2014
This
week’s announcement by ex-Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Sisi that he will run for
the presidency of Egypt was fully expected since the massive, sustained
cult-like hero worship campaign for him first materialized last June. This
coincided with his decision to use the armed forces to remove from office the
ex-elected President Mohammad Morsi, whose year in office revealed the weakness
of the Muslim Brotherhood as a governing party.
Sisi’s election is about as certain as the flow of the Nile River, especially
if the presidential election campaign will follow the pattern of last January’s
constitutional referendum, when those opposed to the constitution were
routinely arrested or physically prevented from putting up their posters in
public. Mostly supportive Egyptian reactions to Sisi’s ascendance to the
presidency in the coming weeks will seal for now Egypt’s major missed
opportunity to craft a genuinely pluralistic and democratic political system,
in favor of very understandable mass demands for stability and security, and
the comfort of a charismatic ex-military leader who can act as father and
protector of a worried land.
I am not surprised by any of this because we witness two huge and universal
dynamics in action. First is the persistence of a power structure that took 60
years to implant itself deeply in the Egyptian mindset, society, bureaucracy
and military, and will not let go easily. Second is the reflexive demand by a
worried citizenry for a strong leader who can make the world right. Egyptians
are not abnormal people, but rather are perfectly normal people who are
behaving abnormally because of the impact of the last 60 years on their mindset
and their governance system.
If it were not Sisi, another charismatic leader would appear on the scene to
promise to restore Egypt’s pride, stability and power. Ahmad Shafik, who was a
Mubarak prime minister, almost did this when he nearly won the first
post-Mubarak presidential election in 2012. So let us take these developments
in stride, and see what the Egyptian people decide, and how Sisi performs as
president. We can only wish them both the best, for Egypt is a great country
that deserves only the best.
What surprises and saddens me, however, is the manner in which Sisi supporters
are using images of the late Gamal Abdel Nasser as a means to generate
emotional support for Sisi. Anyone in Egypt who truly believes that Abdel
Nasser is a historic figure worthy of emulation today is deeply and dangerously
mistaken. I say this because in retrospect we see that the practices and the
legacies of the Nasser decades were among the seminal catastrophes of the
modern Arab World. Virtually everything that has led to the collective
mismanagement, mediocrity, and, in most places, pauperization of the Arab world
in the past two generations usually can be traced back to the perverse
innovations of the Nasser years.
Nasser had a powerful impact on Arab psyches and the short-lived but largely
emotional spirit of Arab nationalism, and he certainly did some positive deeds
in improving socio-economic conditions and opportunities for Egyptian peasants
and workers. That, too, though, was short-lived, because it was destroyed by
the negatives that endure from his presidency: a ghastly concoction of
incompetence, lying, mismanagement and corruption that became the norm across
most of the Arab world since the 1970s.
The two most destructive phenomena that Nasser brought to Arab governance were
military rule and ministries of information, both of which still demean and
haunt us today. The permanent, non-accountable rule of military men that he
established in Egypt has persisted there and across most of the Arab world.
This remains in my mind the single most corrosive element that has led so many
Arab states to their present condition of incompetent governance, which in turn
has caused the mass desperation and revolt of hundreds of millions of Arabs
today who are prepared to die in order to retrieve their rights and their very
humanity.
The establishment of a ministry of information under Nasser was equally
degrading to Egyptian and Arab citizens, because it acted like an Orwellian
monster that sought to control what every citizen heard, saw and read in the
national media. Arab ministries of information around the region were mostly
run by incompetent autocrats, and they sought to have Arab citizens act like
sheep and donkeys who see the world and themselves only as their government
wants them to.
I sincerely hope that this hysterical re-imagination of Nasser is only the
passing sign of fearful men and women who do not know where to turn for succor.
I pray that Egyptians will flourish and prevail because they will activate
their own wisdom, and leave the Nasser ways where they belong—in the sealed
rooms of history’s failures and horrors.
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. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global