Democratic Transition

Jul 14, 2013 Editorial

The situation in Egypt continues to simmer just below boiling point after the killings of pro-government supporters protesting the army ouster of President Mohammed Morsi. One rather pernicious analysis suggested that the reason for the ouster of Morsi was because “political Islam” does not offer “guidance” on running a modern state and its institutions. Rather contradictorily it also proposed that in addition to “political Islam”, even “secular” groups long out of power that have problems performing the task.
The question is, if religion is not an independent variable, why bring it up at all? And the answer is that, as defined by the dominant western paradigm, the views of Islam on governance are considered “backward”. Thus, while it is accepted, for instance, if the Obama from the Democratic Party won the US elections, he would not be expected to appoint Republicans to the Cabinet or to key government positions. Yet when Morsi followed this practice, he is condemned as not being “inclusive” and the army is given carte blanche to stage a coup removing a legally elected head of state from office. This sets a very dangerous precedent in a region in which democracy has only just been introduced.
It may be said that Egypt is very different from the US in that the political scene is much more polarised. While this is arguable going by the rhetoric of the Republicans about President Obama’s Democratic Party and their “liberal agenda”, we did not hear calls for the army to remove Obama after the large Tea Party and Occupy Movement’s protested all across America. The democratic process was allowed to take its course, and Obama went to the polls in 2012 – and won the elections once again. Just as is almost certain, if another free and fair election were to be held in Egypt today or next year, the representative of the Muslim Brotherhood would win hands down.
But even if the charge of a “deeply divided society” is co-joined to the fact of unfamiliarity with democratic norms, there are models of democracy such as “Consociationalism” which enjoins the formation of a “grand coalition” that includes all the major groups in the society. If this is what the Egyptian people desire then such a model can be placed on a referendum for approval. But we doubt that this will be done: what appears to be operating is while the word ‘democracy” is being bandied about rather cavalierly, its central demand that decisions must have the consent of the majority of the people is ignored.
At no time have the vaunted “massive protests” that provided the cover for the return of the army, been more than ten percent of the voting population. But that 10% is dominated by those that reject “political Islam” and its views on governance and is thus “more enlightened”. The essential question that must be answered is whether in the last forty years the army has been socialised into democratic or anti-democratic values and whether it should become the arbiter of democracy in Egypt.
But what was most surprising was that the most obvious answer as to why the Morsi government and the other identified ones such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, were somewhat inept in governance was because they were excluded from power deliberately for decades. They were kept outside of the ambit of running state institutions by despotic regimes that systematically staffed the government with people who were not only loyal to it but were comfortable with anti- democratic norms. If any new regime hopes to return Egypt to some semblance of democratic governance, there will have to be changes in the policy making and upper strata of governance. In a post-authoritarian transition, we are not dealing with a changeover in Whitehall. So to blame Morsi for being unsophisticated in the exercise of power is to practice a political version of “blaming the victim”.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned since 1952 – and yet remain the “people’s choice”. They cannot be excluded from governance.

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