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DEMOCRACY AT WHAT PRICE?

Feb 16, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The protests in Egypt are continuing. The protesters seem not to know what they want.
When everyone expected that following the resignation of President Mubarak, the protesters would have gone home and allowed the situation to stabilize until elections, the people of Egypt do not seem to know when they have won.
They cannot know this because they never knew what they were fighting for in the first place. Having gotten rid of Mubarak, they have resisted the calls of the army to come off the streets so as to restore some amount of normality.
With each passing day the chaos continues. The protesters do not seem to know when to stop. They have of course been led to believe, by the western media, that they have achieved a revolution. Yet there has been no major political or economic change, much less a transformation of social relations.
The media has also been telling the people of Egypt that they have prevailed in their struggle for democracy. But what sort of democracy is there when a military regime is running the country? Is this people’s power? Is this what democracy means? Replace an autocrat with a military junta and that is democracy?
A democracy entails having an elected civilian government. There is no civilian government in Egypt. The military has dissolved the government. A democracy means having a functioning parliament. There is no functioning parliament. A democracy means having constitutional rule. There is military rule in the country. A democracy means a number of other things which are still to be constructed in Egypt. A democracy means that the military should have been free to return to their barracks. They have not. Instead they are pleading with the people to return home.
In the meantime, new demands are being made. Everyone now is placing their demands on the table and the Egyptian pie is much too small to accommodate all these demands at the same time.
What is taking place in Egypt is confusion, utter confusion that could spiral out of hand and create a situation that may have been unpredictable. The confusion will continue because this was a protest that was leaderless and that followed its own course. That course will inevitably lead to self-destruction, because the protesters are making demands which cannot be met in an unstable situation.
In the end, a serious security crisis can result in Egypt which can threaten the whole world, and this is why it is important for people to understand that two hundred thousand persons taking to the streets in a country with a population in excess of eighty million does not represent a democratic movement.
There are hopes that what took place in Egypt can be reproduced in other parts of the Middle East, thus creating a democratic revolution in that part of the world. This is why the western media are now concentrating their efforts at examining how the events in Egypt over the past two weeks have been able to ignite similar protests in Yemen, and particularly in Iran.
There is anticipation that the events, first in Tunisia and then in Egypt, can trigger similar protests in Yemen and Iran. But what if it also happens in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States in that region? Are those keen to see western-style democratic governments in Egypt, willing to see change in other parts of the world? Not likely.
The next few days are crucial both in terms of what happens in Egypt and what happens in other parts of the Middle East. If the situation in that region becomes unsustainable it can cause oil prices to rise which will cause further problems for economic recovery.
And while the West may have its democratic revolution in the Middle East, it may be at the price of serious economic problems.

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