Month: December 2012
Morsi wins, but…
If unofficial results are correct, Egyptian President Morsi won his bet on the new constitution in the first round of the referendum yesterday: 56.5% voted “yes”; 43.5% voted “no.” The results next weekend are likely to be more favorable, as the voting population will include rural areas that generally back the Muslim Brotherhood. Yesterday’s voting in half the provinces included Alexandria, where “yes” won, and Cairo, where “no” votes prevailed.
The issue of turnout is unclear. Al Ahram says it was 33%, which would be strikingly low. But the electoral commission claims 50%, which would be respectable but not impressive. The “party of couch,” as Egyptians call those who abstain from political participation, was in either event large. The process was for the most part orderly, but riddled with allegations of fraud. There were no international observers. Domestic observers were also restricted.
What happens now? First there is next Saturday’s vote. The intervening week is likely to see protests. If they are peaceful, they may win some “no” votes. If they are violent, some people may get up off the couch to vote “yes.” The desire for stability in Egypt seems stronger than interest in restarting the constitution-drafting process, especially in more traditional and poorer rural areas. Those who oppose the Muslim Brotherhood’s draft would be well-advised to use the week talking with prospective voters and trying to win them over rather than taking their often justified complaints to the street.
Then there will be parliamentary elections within two months after the constitution enters into force. That is where the opposition must focus its efforts: unifying its political organization, developing a message with broad popular appeal and getting its voters out to the polls. Last time around (late 2011 and early 2012), Islamists won more than 70% of the seats, in part due to fragmentation among more secularist forces. That is the root of current Islamist political dominance, along with the razor-thin election of Morsi. Depriving them of that dominance in the parliamentary election should be the opposition goal.
Morsi is going to win his referendum bet, likely with more than 60% of the final result. But the constitution only establishes the rules of the game. Those tilt towards the Islamists, especially when it comes to judicial decisions and social issues. The opposition–be it secularist, former regime, moderate Islamist or whatever–still has a chance in the first parliamentary elections of the second Egyptian republic to stymie the more radical Islamist pretensions and begin to win the kind of democratic legitimacy that would enable it to counter Morsi’s still strong position. Democracy is a process that doesn’t end after the first round.
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The referendum is about Morsi
Egypt is voting today and next Saturday on its draft constitution, which President Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists ramrodded through a rump constituent assembly that secularists, Christians, moderate Islamists and others had abandoned. Most of the opposition seems to be urging a “no” vote, rather than a boycott. But turnout may be low. Egypt has had a lot of elections in the last two years. The rules have been changed to require that people vote in their assigned polling places. Previously you could vote anywhere.
Morsi won his presidency with only 51% of the vote. If he loses this referendum, that will be a vote of no confidence from the Egyptian people, who have had a scant two (or three) weeks to consider the question. Morsi has promised popular election of a new constituent assembly to draft a new constitution within six months thereafter if this one fails to gain majority approval.
What if he wins, as most expect? Then Egypt is supposed to go to parliamentary elections. But a win with less than 60% of the vote will send one signal: Morsi is vulnerable. A win with more than 70% of the vote will send a different one: Morsi is in command. Between 60 and 70%, some will spin it one way, others the other way. In any event, it will be the parliamentary elections that will determine Egypt’s course, if Morsi in fact surrenders the dictatorial powers he had arrogated to himself.
Apart from the outcome, the conduct of the referendum will count. Judges are supposed to supervise each polling center. It is unclear whether enough will be available to do so. This is presumably one of the reasons Morsi chose to conduct the voting in some governorates this weekend and in others next weekend. But the opposition is challenging that arrangement in court. Despite clashes in Alexandria yesterday, polling so far seems to be proceeding, with the usual glitches. If it becomes disorderly, a great deal will depend on whom Egyptians blame for precipitating problems.
Egypt has careened through a tumultuous transition since Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011. The best that can be said for the outcome so far is that no one is fully satisfied. The secularists who mounted the initial demonstrations are disappointed that the result is not full-fledged democracy. Minorities, especially Egypt’s Coptic Christians, feel ill-treated. Rich Egyptians and the “remnants” of the old regime feel under attack. Poor Egyptians have seen little tangible benefit. The economy is on the ropes. The Muslim Brotherhood sees threats behind every demonstrator. The Salafists regard even the draft constitution as insufficiently Islamic.
I am hoping the constitution is defeated. That would give Egypt the opportunity for a more inclusive do-over. It would also teach Morsi that he needs to exert himself to be the president of all Egyptians. The process by which the current constitutional draft was written failed to be inclusive and transparent. Even an overwhelming vote in its favor will not erase the hard feelings that has engendered.
The odds are against defeat. If the referendum is approved, the only immediate recourse is the parliamentary election. The opposition needs to learn quickly the tricks of the electoral process if it is to do well. It has consistently failed to do so. Competing with the Muslim Brotherhood will require grassroots campaigning, not unruly demonstrations. It will also require opposition collaboration and unity.
Is Egypt headed back to autocracy, or will it develop a more open and representative political system? Only time will tell. Ten years from now, the answer will be clear. Today nothing is.
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The homefront
PS: Here is what he is what he is up against:
And for those of you who (like me) missed the NRA “press conference” Friday:
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The EU kicks the can
Carl Bildt, Sweden’s long-time and much-followed Foreign Minister, tweeted earlier this week from the General Affairs Council of the European Union:
Finally everything done. Cyprus presidency, Stefan Füle and Cathy Ashton moved all EU enlargement issues successfully forward. Off we go.
I wondered at the time what this meant. Now I know.
It meant nothing: no date for Serbia or Macedonia to begin accession talks, no date for Kosovo to negotiate a Stabilization and Association Agreement. Croatia’s membership next year is expected to proceed on autopilot (with some corrections in Zagreb’s course requested) and Montenegro will continue accession talks. Albania still awaits for a date to start accession negotiations.
Admittedly it is difficult to get too excited about anything in the Western Balkans these days. Syria is imploding. Egypt is turning its judicial system over to religious supervision. Iran is making progress towards nuclear weapons. North Korea is successfully launching a longer-range ballistic missile, disguised as a space-launch vehicle. Afghanistan and Iraq are teetering. Al Qaeda is setting up shop in Mali. The euro is going down the tubes. Who cares what the Greeks want to call Macedonia or whether the former belligerents who run Serbia and Kosovo get dates to begin negotiations (Belgrade for accession, Pristina for a Stabilization and Association Agreement) with Brussels?
The people who live in those places do, that’s who. However insignificant the Balkans look these days from Washington, which is busy with its own domestic quarrels above all else, the region is important to those who inhabit it and has the potential to make life difficult for the rest of us, as it has proven repeatedly over the past 100 years.
A closer reading suggests that things might unfreeze in Brussels in the spring. Macedonia at least can expect a framework for negotiations then, provided it delivers on reforms in the meanwhile. Likewise Serbia, which is asked specifically for
…irreversible progress towards delivering structures in northern Kosovo which meet the security and justice needs of the local population in a transparent and cooperative manner, and in a way that ensures the functionality of a single institutional and administrative set up within Kosovo.
Also important is
…the agreement of the two Prime Ministers to work together in order to ensure a transparent flow of money in support of the Kosovo Serb community…
While couched in the EU’s usual obscurantist language, we see emerging here a detailed understanding of the real challenges that have so far blocked reintegration of the north with the rest of Kosovo. Bravo to the EU for acknowledging them!
Some of the same perspicacity is evident in the discussion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the EU finds the need to reiterate
…its unequivocal support for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU perspective as a sovereign and united country enjoying full territorial integrity.
It’s not good news when Brussels kicks off this way, though I’d be the first to admit that its subsequent suggestions of what needs to be done to fix the problem are thoroughly inadequate.
Pristina gets a pat on the back for its engagement in the talks and language identical to that addressed to Belgrade on northern Kosovo, plus a recommendation to develop an outreach plan.
Don’t get me wrong: it is correct for the EU to insist on specific reforms and benchmarks in dealing with the Western Balkans. Unfortunately, it is still true that conditionality is what moves things forward in many of these countries. In most of them, I expect the EU carrot will bring real changes, albeit in fits and starts. The most concerning is Bosnia, where the EU acknowledges the challenges to sovereignty that Milorad Dodik and Republika Srpska pose but fails to offer adequate responses and continues to quarrel with Washington over whether the High Representative should stay or go.
The EU has kicked the can down the road. The best we can hope for is a spring thaw.
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What can go wrong?
I am a great fan of Fred Hof’s Seven Key Points on Syria elaborated yesterday at the Atlantic Council. While I might quarrel on particular points, he lays out clearly what he thinks has to be done to make Syria come out reasonably well from the American perspective. What he recommends would also be good for the vast majority of Syrians.
But of course that means he also implies the inverse, all the things that can go wrong. They are at least as many as his seven points:
- The end of the Asad regime could still take a long time. This would mean not only more death and destruction, but also more polarization and radicalization. The Syrian state might well fail if this goes on for weeks, never mind months, more.
- Since there is no silver bullet, we are going to have to do a lot of things at the same time to hasten the regime’s end. Sanctions tend to erode with time. Even if they are maintained, the regime will learn how to evade and exploit them. Washington has to try to get the Russians on board, even as we work with Friends of Syria to do things that will offend Moscow. The Americans also have to manage Iran–stopping its nuclear program is arguably more important to Washington than winning the day in Syria.
- The new Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces will need to get an alternative government up and running quickly. It is hard to picture much more difficult conditions in which to do this. The opposition is still politically fractious, large parts of it are lacking in funds, communications are difficult and it will need to incorporate many new faces as the regime starts to crumble.
- If guns decide the outcome, extremists are likely to come out on top. They will not only have earned in combat the admiration of parts of the population. They will also be in a position to distribute resources and intimidate opposition.
- The Americans are late supplying arms. Even if they move expeditiously now, they are behind the curve. And Washington will want to provide arms only to those who offer guarantees in return that they will not be used against the civilian population or transferred to extremists. Conditions, however justified, will slow the process and make it far less efficient than Saudi and Qatari distribution of hard cash.
- The messiness of the post-Asad period will make it hard to understand what is going on and also hard to mobilize resources. Parts of the state–the secret services in particular–are likely to collapse, sectarian sentiment will run high, revenge killings will happen, the international community will be slow out of the gate and the political horizon will be cloudy. It is difficult to picture where the troops for an international stabilization force would come from. Hof’s suggestion that Turkish forces protect the Alawites may be unwelcome both in Istanbul and Latakia.
- Resources are not likely to arrive quickly. They rarely do, and Syria is a poor country (more like Egypt than like Libya in terms of natural resources). The standards for accountability and transparency that the international community levies will not be easy to meet.
This is not a pretty picture. A collapsed state with extremists on top, sectarian warfare in many places and inadquate resources from the international community could make Syria look something like Iraq in 2006.
I am an enthusiast for the Syrian opposition, which has been through difficult trials and always bounces back fighting. They are going to succeed in toppling Bashar al Asad. But success in bringing down Asad quickly and the subsequent transition will require a much more concerted effort than we have seen thus far by the Syrians, and by the international community.
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The Syrian grassroots need watering
Even the Russian deputy foreign minister seems now to be anticipating the fall of Bashar al Asad, and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is gaining international recognition. But national transition planning is still rudimentary, even though many communities have already been liberated. What do transition efforts look like on the local level? This was the question tackled in Tuesday’s event at the New America Foundation. Mohammed Ghanem, Syrian American Council senior political adviser, and Ilhan Tanir of Turkish Newspaper Vatan, described emerging local governance and civil society in their recent visits to Syria.
Syria is in a crisis that would overwhelm any city official, but local councils so far appear to be relatively adept at coming up with solutions. The Associated Press reports that roughly two million Syrians are displaced in the country and more than half a million refugees have fled to neighboring countries. Violence continues’ bringing the death toll to about 40,000 over 21 months of violence. The economy has been devastated. In August 2010 one US Dollar was equivalent to about 47 Syrian Pounds. Today that number has risen to at least 71 Syrian Pounds.
In “liberated” areas all over the country, civilians have joined together to form local councils to address these problems and the other daily issues facing Syrians: lack of cooking oil, trash on the streets and security, for example. Tanir noted that the local councils are particularly impressive because they lack experience. Under Asad, government was highly centralized and average citizens were not accustomed to any sort of political organizing.
Ghanem described the Aleppo Revolutionary Transitional Council, a local council that sees itself as a model for other cities. The city elected a 32-member board, which established 12 different committees. Ghanem estimates that about 80% of those fighting the Asad regime in the Aleppo area coalesced into the council. The council has emphasized that it is an interim project that will need to be re-worked when a new national government forms. For now, the council has had some success coordinating with other elements of the opposition. Civilians and the military cooperate and compete to provide services. Ghanem also argued that local councils are well-represented in the National Coalition, but he did not discuss the rocky start to that relationship.
The main problem facing the transitional council is lack of funding. The council’s committee on security wanted to form a civilian police force to do the daily work of ensuring safety in Aleppo, leaving the Free Syrian Army to fight on the front. A leader was appointed to organize the new force, but he had no money for uniforms, much less salaries. The council also wanted to restore the court system to provide due process for those captured fighting for the Asad regime, but they lacked the resources to make the necessary changes. Funding and support are essential to the council’s legitimacy. If they cannot provide services to the people, they will not be seen as legitimate leaders.
The Free Syrian Army faces a similar problem. About every 15 to 20 days it receives enough supplies for one day of fighting. This level of support is enough to perpetuate the stalemate and keep the opposition in the war, Tanir argued, but it is not enough to allow the Free Syrian Army to win.
Are the local councils meeting the international community’s request for representative leadership? Tanir noted that there are no women on any of the local councils because of a lack of safety for women and conservative beliefs. Ghanem pointed out that women do have important roles in the National Coalition, however. Sectarian divisions are also apparent, with local councils dominated by the area’s majority sect. Ghanem expects the councils will become more open as violence in the country decreases. There are already positive examples of inter-sectarian conflict resolution. Ghanem described the Aleppo transitional council’s effort to reach out to Armenian Christians to lay the groundwork for a good relationship in a post-Asad Syria.
The local councils represent an important transition effort in Syria, but the risk that they will collapse due to a lack of resources is troubling.
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