Glass half full
Amr Hamzawy, now a secularist member of the Egyptian parliament, returned to the Carnegie Endowment where he once worked on democratization issues today with a more optimistic version of what is going on in Egypt than the one I reported earlier this week.
Democratic transition is always messy, but Amr suggested four facts important to judging whether things are improving or not:
1. Egypt is way behind its original timetable for transition, which called for turnover of the government from the military to civilians within six months. It will take 17 or 18 months, provided the first round of the presidential election occurs later this month, as now planned. Preparation of the constitution, which should have preceded the presidential election, will now occur afterwards, giving the new president the abundant powers the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces now exercises and influence over the constitutional outcome. In addition, the constitution-drafting body has now been blocked in court, because of its legitimacy deficit. It did not include sufficient non-Islamist or women’s representation.
2. Human rights violations continue “nonstop.” Civilians are still tried in military courts, even more than was done under Mubarak. Military crackdowns on demonstrations are deadly and brutal.
3. Egyptian politics are nevertheless dynamic and diverse, with citizens fully engaged. There is currently a spirited debate on whether the presidential election should proceed. There is also ample debate within the various political forces, with the Islamists far from unified. There is no general moderating trend. The Muslim Brotherhood (Freedom and Justice Party) is becoming more pragmatic on the constitution and rights, but more conservative on social issues. The Salafists (El Nour) are very conservative on personal freedom but good on freedom of association and also on NGOs.
4. Non-Islamist political forces are strengthening and cooperating more with Islamists, who increasingly recognize the importance of consensus to the legitimacy of what they do, including in constitution-writing. There are plans for various non-Islamist parties to merge under the umbrella of Mohammed el Baradei’s constitutional party, something they could not do before the elections because they needed to test their relative electoral strength. The Islamists will not benefit much from their current time in power, because they are not delivering on their inflated promises. Their popularity has peaked. The Americans are wrong to focus their attention so strongly on the Muslim Brotherhood. The non-Islamist forces in parliament will soon deliver a liberal draft law on nongovernmental organizations as well as legislation against torture and sexual harassment. Al Azhar, the most important religious authority in Egypt, has done papers on democracy and personal freedoms that are very good and will influence the political forces, which have generally endorsed Al Azhar’s views.
Of course there are many other shortcomings: security sector reform hasn’t begun, rule of law is weak. Christians are not well-represented in the current parliament and some are leaving Egypt, but others are engaging more in the political sphere to regain lost ground.
Having ended natural gas exports to Israel, Egypt will maintain the Camp David peace treaty but no more so long as settlement activity continues.
There are difficult years ahead, but the Egyptian transition has not yet failed.
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“Having ended natural gas exports to Israel, …”
This is not the disaster for Israel it might have been a decade ago (when they still used to talk about ‘some promised land – the only spot in the Mid-East with no hydrocarbons’). Israel is already producing from massive gas reserves in its territorial waters, and if it needs LNG in addition, it will soon be able to obtain it from the U.S., even if no Arab states want to deal with it. (And there’s always Norway, of course.)
The shale-gas story may change everything – the U.S. has replaced Russia as the largest gas producer in the world. We haven’t yet ramped up LNG exports (but the terminals that were built to accommodate imports have been rejiggered to allow for exporting it). Cheap gas is making our manufacturing more competitive and weakening Putin’s stranglehold on Europe’s economy. (Gazprom has already been forced to cut prices in some markets. And over-excitable Serbian patriots should probably forget about making Europe come begging for gas in the winter.) If/Once the gas-to-oil conversion process is worked out, we could be energy-independent until renewables come on line. No wonder Saudi Arabia is willing to promise as much oil as the world wants at $100 a barrel – they may be beginning to worry about being left with oil as valuable as sand.)
And BTW, where does Egypt plan on selling the gas it’s not selling to Israel? It’s not as though they can load it on a truck and send it off in the opposite direction – pipelines and/or LNG facilities require time and capital, and Egypt needs ready cash as it is.