Day: February 5, 2011

From the midst of uncertainty

Rashad Mahmood, back in touch now that the internet is functioning, writes from Cairo:

It seems the regime is still divorced from reality, but now at least realizes that some superficial changes need to be made. The new Secretary-General of the NDP, Hossam Badrawy is more respectable than the recognized crooks such as Safwat El-Sherif and Ahmed Ezz, but these changes are basically a tangent to the substance of what the demonstrators want. One friend with knowledge of the NDP sees this as a move to preserve the respectability of the NDP post-Mubarak, and turning it into a normal center-right party that would look after the interests of the business elites, while other parties would move in to fill the gap to its left.

However, the state and the NDP are so inseparable at this point that it is hard to envision how this transition would happen. Can the institutions captured by the party such as the electoral commission, large swaths of the judiciary, the entire security services, and others really let the party become one among many? That’s the question going forward. It is also unknown to what extent Suleiman is integrated into the NDP apparatus, if at all, which raises interesting questions for a potential Suleiman presidency.

This is all distinct from the substantive demands of the protesters for the removal of Mubarak, lifting the emergency law, new elections, and constitutional reform. All they have right now is the word of Suleiman and Shafiq, which no one seems inclined to take at face value.

There is no clear leadership of the demonstrators. There seems to be a network of organizers who are keeping things running, and in time some of them may come to have a greater voice, but I have not heard of anyone really stepping up to the plate. This may be to the advantage of the protesters, since there is no one the regime can target to decapitate the movement. El Baradei still seems somewhat marginal, despite the Brotherhood’s backing, although it’s hard to tell from my living room.  Who knows what backroom negotiations are going on?

The only other potential leadership on the horizon is the group of “wise men” that issued the statement that Carnegie translated. There are some very well-respected names on the list from both the business and liberal intellectual worlds. Allegedly there have been talks between the regime and representatives of the group, but will the protesters feel cut out of the process? One tweeter said, something like, “beware of billionaires claiming to side with a revolution.”

Last few thoughts. Some are saying that the regime has successfully fought off the protesters and that it is going to survive with a more liberal, but fundamentally authoritarian system. While I think this is a possibility, I would say that there are still too many moving pieces to say definitively, and too many opportunities for the regime to screw things up (from their perspective).

The lost international legitimacy is going to be hard to make up without some substantive reforms. If it does relapse into a mostly authoritarian system with Suleiman at the helm, it will be interesting to see how the US reacts. After all the publicity, and the high-profile calls for substantive change and reform, it will be hard to defend Suleiman when he cracks down on protesters or tries to rig elections.

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Leaderless is good, but it can’t negotiate

One of the great virtues of the demonstrations in Egypt is that they have been leaderless, or more accurately they have multiple leaders, none of whom are clearly dominant in the sense that they command and control the mass of demonstrators.  It is a virtue because it means the movement can’t be decapitated, and unity is easier to maintain without egos in the way.  Arrest a few “instigators” and others pop up.  While Mohammed El Baradei, Ayman Nour and others may have visibility in the West that others lack, there is no evidence yet that they could call off the demonstrations, or turn them back on.

The problem with this is that the process has reached the point at which negotiators are needed to work out the transition to a more democratic regime.  This is particularly difficult in Egypt’s case because the constitution gives President Mubarak powers that are needed in the transition.  As two of the demonstrators(Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty) explain in the Washington Post this morning, an interim president (either Vice President Omar Suleiman in the case of a temporary delegation of power or the Mubarak crony who is the Speaker of parliament if he resigns) cannot propose constitutional amendments, dissolve parliament or even dismiss the cabinet.

The result:  elections would have to be held within 60 days under the present constitution, which requires a parliament now more than 90% controlled by Mubarak cronies to approve candidates for president.

Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty claim that this difficulty can be overcome with an explicit delegation of authority by President Mubarak before he resigns or absents himself temporarily:

So before Mubarak resigns he must sign a presidential decree delegating all of his authorities to his vice president until their current terms end in September. Mubarak issued similar decrees, transferring his powers to the prime minister, when he was hospitalized in 2004 and 2009. In addition, Mubarak must issue decrees lifting the “state of emergency” that has allowed him to suppress Egyptians’ civil liberties since 1981 and ordering the release or trial of those held in administrative detention without charge – estimated to be in the thousands.

And they want more:

Also before Mubarak resigns, an independent commission of respected judges, constitutional law experts, civil society representatives and all political movements should draft language to amend the constitution to ensure that presidential elections are open to all credible candidates; that Egyptians abroad are allowed – for the first time – to vote; that any elected president is allowed to serve only two terms; and that the elections are supervised by judicial and civil monitors.

Tarek Masoud, in yesterday’s New York Times, even asks that Mubarak stay on through dissolution of parliament and new elections.

All of this clearly requires negotiations–this is not a simple matter like the demand that Slobodan Milosevic recognize the results of an election he had in fact lost. And for negotiations there is going to have to be credible leadership, and a solid mass of demonstrators behind it.

In its absence, the regime is already exploiting the situation by “negotiating” piecemeal with opposition political parties that are as much a part of the regime as Mubarak. If they can co-opt a few well-known oppositionists while the numbers in Tahrir square decline, Mubarak and Omar Suleiman can still hope to nickel and dime the tired demonstrators and set up a transition to something that may replace regime personnel at the top but will not require accountability or change the deep state, in particular the army’s outsized role in Egyptian politics, economics and society and the extensive internal security apparatus that keeps people in line.

So the time has come for some convincing leadership to tell Omar Suleiman (and the Americans, who have become de facto mediators) what the terms of Mubarak’s surrender will be. You would have to know more about what is going on in Cairo than I do to predict how that leadership will emerge and who will be in it, but if it doesn’t appear soon there is a real risk of losing ground in a war now almost won.

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