ETERAZ

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak as many had already anticipated extended the decades-old state of emergency by a further two years as of the 1st of June. This knocked the air out of many since it directly flew in the face of numerous promises and pledges previously made by the government that new legislation would be forthcoming to replace the state of emergency of which many ordinary Egyptians have grown tired and weary. The law was passed at the president’s discretion after a “protracted debate” in the Egyptian parliament. The decision has been met with staunch criticism both inside and outside of Egypt. Critics of the controversial law’s renewal have been quick to point out that a unilateral decision by the executive branch i.e. President Mubarak, is a flagrant violation of the most basic of democratic principles. Pockets of protest were evident up and down the country, but were rapidly suppressed by security forces who had been prepared well in advance for enraged and malcontent crowds denouncing the law’s renewal.

The state of emergency was first imposed in 1981 after Mubarak’s predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated by militant Islamists. Ever since and throughout the course of Mubarak’s three-decade-long presidency, Egypt’s state of emergency has been repeatedly renewed to the detriment not only of radical Islamists against whom it was partially aimed, but Egyptian human rights activists and the plethora of other groups and organizations, who populate Egyptian civil society. According to critics, the Egyptian authorities have frequently used the state of emergency in order to suppress political opponents in the name of national security; not only the proscribed Muslim Brotherhood who are forced to stand as independents in the Egyptian parliament have been persecuted (something over which Western observers rarely lose any sleep), but also prominent Egyptian liberals such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Ayman Nour have regularly been detained, beaten or tortured for their critical stances toward the person of the president and his government’s policies. Only recently did, Hafez Abu Sada, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, tell the AFP news agency that "The state of emergency has for decades been one of the main causes of human rights violations in Egypt".

Thus long before the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben announced that something like a global state of emergency had come to define our modern condition, as part and parcel of the Bush administration’s indefinite “war on terror”, Egyptians had become accustomed to living in a time of arbitrary arrest and unbridled executive power. Hamid Dabashi, the well-known cultural critic in a similar vein has argued, albeit in a different context that the perpetuation of such a state of emergency thrives best on a ‘widespread culture of catastrophe that must systematically generate and sustain that state of exception’ and which ‘amounts to a perpetual state of war.’ The Egyptian state, in large part out of an initial confrontation with militant Islamism as exemplified by groups such as the Gamaa Islamiya,[1] but also as a result of Nasser’s own Arab-Socialist revolution, which relied heavily upon a highly centralized and bureaucratic state and security apparatus, has allowed the state of emergency and its repercussions for democracy in Egypt to infect all four corners of civil society, with dire consequences for Egypt’s onetime vibrant intellectual and artistic milieu. A milieu that produced the hitherto unmatched literature of Nobel Laureate, Naguib Mahfouz and the seductive tones of one of the Arab world’s most beloved singers, Umm Kalthoum.[2]

Out of this melee a number of questions immediately present themselves. One question predominates, however. Not only for Egyptian elites, intellectuals and opposition forces, but also for ordinary Egyptians themselves: who will succeed Egypt’s octogenarian and yet impressively robust president? The president’s declining health has been rumored for over ten years, but as is the case with nearly all leaders in the Arab and Muslim world, the nation’s leader’s health is a state-secret of which only a paltry few remain apprised; discussed largely behind closed doors and never aired for public debate or wider scrutiny. One only needs to compare this to the situation in the United States where the health of the key political figures is the topic of often sensationalist media speculation, to observe the disparity vis-à-vis this aspect of the respective political cultures. Just think about the clamor and welter of opinions which were expressed regarding Senator Edward Kennedy’s recent stroke and even more discussed operation to remove his malignant brain tumor; or the hundreds of blog entries and web pages voicing consternation about the long drawn out release of information pertaining to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, John McCain’s health.

In the Arab world by contrast discussion of presidents’ health and medical records is minimal to non-existent. Silence on the matter of their president’s health has been radically undermined on a number of occasions in Egypt, however. The first was Mubarak’s narrow escape from an assassination attempt by the Gamaa while the president was on route from the airport to a conference in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The second took place on the 13th of November 2003 when Mubarak collapsed while delivering the inaugural speech for the new Parliamentary session in front of the assembly and millions of viewers watching at home.[3] The president was quickly rushed for medical treatment and despite the fact that a rather flushed and flustered president returned to finish the remainder of his speech, Egyptians have been jockeying for greater transparency and information on the status of their leader’s health ever since.

In a nation which since the Free Officer’s Coup of July 1952 has be governed by a slew of authoritarian leaders, it’s pretty much become a given that whoever occupies the position of president will inevitably shape and leave his mark on the nation’s priorities and the manner in which the country is governed. Though such an approach can tend to be immensely reductive, it’s nevertheless interesting to observe the manner in which leaders’ personalities come to be reflected and mirrored in the body politic and vice versa. For example, in the case of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s second president, both admirers and adversaries are wont to agree that the Arab world has never seen and may never see again the likes of such a charismatic and commanding leader. To this day he remains a figure of immense stature and a beacon to many Arab nationalists and adherents of the doctrine of pan-Arabism.

Many acknowledge that Nasser catapulted Egypt into the forefront of the Arab world and the non-aligned movement alongside such leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru and Zhou Enlai. And despite the fact that a frank evaluation of Nasser’s legacy might contend that the final result was abject failure; Egypt’s devastating defeat at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces in the Six Day War of 1967 undeniably sent shock waves across the region and initiated a whole new era in the history of the Middle East, in effect precipitating the demise of the pan-Arab project. There’s still little denying Nasser’s indelible mark on Egyptian and world history and the sentimental attachment many Egyptian’s continue to bear for his legacy.

Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat also took a number of highly significant decisions in the course of his presidency. 1) Moving Egypt once and for all out of the Soviet camp, in order to ally himself with the United States. 2) Taking the previously unfathomable step of making peace with Israel in the Camp David Peace Agreement of 1978. And finally 3) opening up the Egyptian economy to private investment and various other neoliberal policies in the process known as intifah. Whether one favored or lamented the policies undertaken by either Nasser or Sadat there’s little doubt that both profoundly impacted Egyptian politics. Mubarak by contrast has performed a more managerial role, ensuring that the ship runs smoothly while doing his best to maintain the status quo and avoid unnecessarily rocking the boat.

Though Mubarak in many respects has extended and developed the legacy of Sadat and has over the years further consolidated Egypt’s diplomatic and economic ties with the US and Israel, less sanguine observers have also pointed to a deep-seated stagnation in both the Egypt’s economy, international standing and intellectual production throughout the course of his three decades as president.

Scholars and journalists such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Asef Bayat and Tariq Osman argue that Egypt’s stagnant political climate is the result of the patent lack of any genuine political liberalization, which ought to have, but never came to accompany Sadat’s economic reforms. The Egyptian system, like the French and Lebanese, has both a president and a prime minister. But parliament is far less powerful in Egypt. Parliament previously nominated the president, on whom a national referendum would then be held. In this at times surreal system the presidential nominee didn’t run against an opponent and he obviously was unable to lose a referendum in which he was the only candidate. Hosni Mubarak won four six-year terms in this fashion. The system of course for the most part was a mere façade, though parliamentary deputies did on occasion mildly represent their districts.[4] In May 2005, a national referendum approved a constitutional amendment that set up presidential elections as an actual election, in which multiple candidates were permitted. Only parties certified by parliament, however, could field presidential candidates and parliament in turn was overwhelmingly dominated by the National Democratic Party (NDP) of Hosni Mubarak. The result was never in doubt: Mubarak won the election and the thinly veiled sham of democratisation in Egypt has continued only slightly worse for wear.
Mubarak has been in power for nearly thirty years and during that time he has repeatedly refused to appoint a vice president and thereby delineate a clear line of succession. Article 82 of the Egyptian constitution clearly states that when the president is no longer able to fulfill his obligations, his executive powers by default fall to the office of the vice president. Many claim he has thus far intentionally avoided doing so in order to groom his son Gamal, who left his apparently lucrative career as an investment banker and in 2002 became General Secretary of the NDP’s Policy Committee: the third most powerful position in the party and the starting point for many executive decisions. Gamal’s brisk rise up the party ranks, Hosni Mubarak’s refusal to appoint a vice president, and the forced retirement of a number of pre-eminent figures and possible rivals, have all been interpreted as part of a scheme orchestrated by elder-Mubarak to leave his son without serious competitors for the presidency.

This, and the rise to power of Bashar al-Asad, son of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Asad, have given credence to much gossip, chatter and conjecture as to whether such a prospect is seriously in the offing. The emergence of the slightly strange and well-nigh oxymoronic lexicon of ‘hereditary republics’ and ‘monarpublicanism’ has become common parlance in the Arab world since Bashar’s inauguration in 2000. Plentiful signs that hereditary republics may well be on the cards in Libya and Yemen, have also added to the profusion of speculation regarding the elder Mubarak’s potential successor.

Despite Hosni Mubarak’s persistent denials that a plan is underway to install his son as Egypt’s next president, the general feeling in Egypt is that the writing is on the wall. Gamal is being framed as Egypt’s next leader and marketed to a skeptical public as the ‘only’ real alternative for the job. Since his entry into political life, Gamal has appeared at a meeting of Arab ambassadors with ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Labour Party Conference and met President Bush who reports claim left with a very positive impression of the young statesman. Gamal is known to the U.S. as well as the British leadership, and neither the elder Mubarak nor the West desires by any means to dramatically alter the status quo, irrespective of the many avowals to the contrary: the US-Egyptian relationship in particular is a relatively cozy one and a near-perfect example of a ‘marriage of convenience’. What is needed is an effective manager who’ll keep the nation and the economy ticking along, while dramatic reforms might cause unforeseen repercussions and be to the detriment of much-guarded interests. And so goes the common refrain, on both sides of the fence: “if such measures are preserved at the expense of democracy and civil liberties, then so be it, order after all is better than chaos, is it not?”

© Sadegh Kabeer
[1] Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, Gilles Kepel, trans. Anthony F. Roberts, I.B Tauris, 2006, p292-298
[2] Egypt: A Diagnosis, Tariq Osman, openDemocracy.net, 27 June, 2007
[3] Egypt Needs a President, Not a Pharaoh, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Daily Times (Pakistan), November 9, 2004
[4] Bush's War and the Egyptian Elections, Juan Cole, Salon.com, September 19, 2005