Articles by Dr. Sherif Hetata

All This Beautiful Talk About Democracy or Jockeying for Positions

22 May 2004

These days we are witnessing what might be described as a "carnival of democracy." Every day I open the newspapers to find a chorus of statements, declarations, articles, columns, debates, essays and commentaries expressing the dire need to engage in democratic change. Public radio and television have echoed this wonderful national consensus in which both government and semi-governmental circles, intellectuals and politicians and a few figures from the so-called opposition have joined hands. This chorus extends even beyond our national boundaries to include those who rule in the European Union and who since the Barcelona declaration of 1994 speak of European Arab partnership, as well as the neo liberal group ruling in the United States which is trying to launch what they call the Project for a Greater Middle East.

Yet somehow deep down inside I have growing doubts perhaps shared by many men and women in Egypt about this democratic campaign. May be it is the orchestration which makes me wary of what our rulers are trying to pass off on us. May be it is because when I open the newspapers I see the same photographs of "governmental" or "oppositional" figures who have cooperated, or fought minor battles in the party and parliamentary game seeking to pass itself off on us as "democracy", even though the photographs now often appear in lurid colours instead of black and white. May be the faces in these photographs are once again just jockeying for positions for a "pseudo-national" government in the coming year or years. May be because with the global market, and the global multinational system hegemonized under the Project for a New American Century and a United States Empire our vision of what constitutes democracy has to be revised especially after the signal failure of parliamentary and party politics in solving the terrible problems faced these days by the Arab, African, Asian, and other peoples of the world.
No one can be averse to reform or deny the struggle of many people in Egypt for democracy but we need to follow carefully what is being proposed as democratic reform and decide whether it will really change the autocratic systems under which we have been living for so many years.

The Alexandria Meeting:

Around the middle of last March about one hundred and fifty men and women belonging to the political, cultural and professional "elite" met together for a period of three days. The meeting was held significantly in the library of Alexandria and discussed what was called "Issues of Arab Reform". At the end of the meeting the participants brought out a statement later named the Alexandria Document (Wathekat Al- Iskandareya).

After the statement appeared a number of personalities commented favourably on it. Among them was "Colin Powell" the United States Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, "Condoleeza Rice" the National Security Advisor, as well as "George W. Bush" the President who mentioned it during the recent visit of President "Hosni Mubarak" to the United States. All three expressed their satisfaction with this "Document" and described it as an important initiative that had arisen "from within Egyptian society" and was aimed at activating the democratic reforms so badly needed in the Arab countries including Egypt. These were reforms which they themselves had referred to previously on different occasions before and after the war waged on Iraq which according to them was itself aimed at "replacing the tyrannical system of "Saddam Hussein" by a democratic regime".
They were attempting to refute any possible relationship between the suggestions for democratic reform put forward by the participants in the Alexandria meeting who are well known for their close lies with government circles and the previous proposals made by "Colin Powell" several months before, or with the Project for a Greater Middle East to be discussed in the next meeting of the G8 industrialized countries scheduled for 6-9 June, 2004 in Sea Islands, Florida or with the fact that this project envisages a "security system" for the "Middle East" under the control of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in which Israel will play a primordial role.

During the past period a number of Arab rulers and personalities including President "Hosni Mubarak" also welcomed the Alexandria initiative. The topic of democratic reform started to be widely discussed, and an increasing number of political figures and "thinkers" voiced their opinions in different newspapers and magazines or in T.V. programs and demanded constitutional reforms in the parliamentary and presidential election system, the repeal of laws limiting free speech, freedom of opinion and organization, formation of political parties, trade unions and associations, publication of newspapers, etc.

In the course of this semi-official campaign for democratic reform a member of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Al-Ahram well known as an official commentator on policy matters requested the abolition of martial law, and immediately after the Minister of Interior in person welcomed the idea on condition that measures were taken to ensure "stability, law and order, and security".
Things went even further. Prominent left wing intellectuals expressed their delight with the suggestions for democratic reform in the "wonderful and historic Alexandria document" (Sic) although one or two of them mentioned, albeit in timid, butterfly terms reservations concerning the privatization and free trade suggestions included in its economic section.

For sometime now especially since the publication of the United Nation Development Fund and Arab Experts report on Human resources in the region, (2002 and then 2003) a report which dwelt largely on human rights, education and training, women's rights, etc the issue of democratic reform has occupied the front stage. But the question which we should keep asking is "Will these democratic reforms be tailor-made to suit the interests of the "global market", of the United States and European Union of the multinationals, of the Arab rulers under pressure by people to make changes, and of the "elite" whether governmental or oppositional who together are the prime beneficiaries and players in the political scene, or are we moving towards something really different?

The Alexandria Document:

When people like "George W. Bush", "Condoleeza Rice", and "Colin Powell" welcome the Alexandria Document it is natural if many of us wonder why it came so suddenly out of the blue from an officially sponsored group, what aims it seeks to fulfil, and what interests it will serve.

The first thought which may come to one's mind is how far can our society move towards democracy if we submit to the demands of an accelerated privatization, of the global market and of the policies imposed on us by United States hegemony and its partners in the European Union despite the contradictions which arise between them over markets and areas of influence at different times.
Ever since Sadat declared his "open door policy" and began the process of assimilation into the global free market, and into free trade we have witnessed the growing gap between rich and poor, the increasing poverty and unemployment, the difficulties facing the middle class, the economic harassment encountered by people in their daily lives. Political activity, the media, the newspapers, elections, parliamentary representation are now the sole privilege, of those who have money, of an elitist few, and of those who entrenched in the bureaucratic apparatus are the allies of capitalist enterprise built on market operations, speculation, import and export, currency manipulation and brokerage for multinational companies. Is it possible any longer to separate between the exercise of democratic freedoms and the distribution of wealth, between democracy and social justice, if our democracy is not to become more and more for sale to those who have money, and on the power exercised by a huge repressive bureaucratic state apparatus? Are we not threatened with seeing our democracy captive to the worst in the two worlds of money and state control. Is there not a fundamental contradiction between the disindustrialized, economic privatized system into which we have been drawn and the exercise of any democracy to speak of?

The Alexandria document speaks glowingly of democratic reform, and at the same time pulls the carpet from under its already unsteady feel by what it describes as economic privatized, free market reform in a country already the prey to the huge corporations that rule over the world, which are penetrating more and more into every corner of our lives to remove the remains of any social stability and protection we may still enjoy.

If in addition to that all this talk about democracy is being raised in the context of Bush's Project for a "Greater Middle East", of an ongoing war against terrorism waged by a state terrorism which has locked its citizens behind the bars of a Patriot Act, two terrorisms which are synergistically linked because the existence of each depends on the continuation of the other, of a security to be imposed on us by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization extending its jurisdiction over us in cooperation with a nuclear armed, technological war machined Israeli State, of a military occupation of Iraq, and a network of military bases, of rulers whose antidemocratic history is common knowledge to every man and woman struggling to live through life then what democracy this document talking about? Could it not be just another cover up for the impotence of Arab systems which have lost any credibility to speak of but continue to rule?

Since the end of the Second World War Arab rulers in succession have assiduously weeded out, suppressed or cooperated the viable democratic forces in their countries. They know very well that any tailor-made freedoms they may allow will mainly serve as more space for maneuver, more free movement for those who have money or for fundamentalist forces, to engage us for some time in new electoral activities far removed from any real change in our lives so that they can hopefully pass over the difficult days that lie ahead, and still remain in the saddle of a mount which threatens to unseat them at any moment.

The unfortunate thing is that many of our "thinkers", including those whom some of us still see as really on the side of democratic and social reform, have wittingly or unwittingly fallen into this democratic trap at a time when many things have changed, when new forces have arisen that are seeking to break out of a democratic mould which is outmoded, and to establish a different democracy built on the initiative and creativeness of the dispossessed, and of wretched of the earth. A democracy of new forces rising from below, not a democracy dictated by the global few, and the elite who look up to them for the manna which falls down from heaven from time to time.