The Nile Valley elections: a bit of democracy augments the bureaucracy
By Mahgoub El-Tigani
September 10, 2005 — These past days, Egypt, the Sudan’s most influential neighbor, witnessed a serious round of presidential elections followed by active preparations by both government and opposition groups to prepare a larger round of parliamentary elections.
For many observers, the Egyptian elections were not “genuine” in the sense that a three decades’ ruling party, or even more, considering the 1950s military origins of the present-time regime, could not have been challenged by the weakened leftist Tajamu, the prohibited right-wing Muslim Brotherhood, the growing Kifaya movement, or the harassed middle-class century’s old Al-Wafd party. “It is a change in the frame; but the contents remained unchanged,” asserted both Egyptian and non-Egyptian critics.
Other commentators, however, stated jubilantly that the election was a promising step towards democratic rule: popular pressures, relatively small as they were (even though augmented with American external pressure on the ruling system), led to a significant change in the constitution that had permitted a competition of multiple candidacy to the presidency, reduced security hegemony, enhanced the freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and demonstrations, and increased opportunities for new leaderships and agency.
Moreover, the ruling party itself would be positively motivated to announce some reforms in State structures and executive performance since it has been seriously exposed before the eyes of the whole nation and the world for the first time, at full scale. The Egyptian Presidency, in particular, would manipulate its experiences in a better way to improve relations with the public, the way it tried during the election campaign.
In all situations of partial modernization, to borrow a succinct depiction by Dietrich Rueschemeyer (1978) of the state of affairs of the third world countries where political ambiguity and short-lived democracies prevailed with respect to the forms of rule most of these countries maintained in the second half of the 20th century, it appears the same “partial modernity” survived in the present time since the political and the economic conditions of these countries continued largely unchanged.
Dictators still rule unchecked or balanced with any competing powers on the basis of constitutional law, not by a presidential gratuity or a military amnesty; the State is a most repressive power machine; opposition parties are forced to stay at a remote distance from access to national decision making; and the general public has no option but to turn its back to both governments and opposition groups, frustrated with the unchangeable conditions of a faltering social, economic, cultural, and political life.
Under these circumstances, the Arab and the African regions are clearly expressive of the need to have intensive external democratic support for the popular movements of these societies versus the technical, political, and military support that the repressive regimes undeservedly receive.
Most important, there is a great need to emphasize the accomplishment thus far attained in the Egyptian elections being, in essence, costly generated, monitored, and followed-up by the public at large to bring about some change in the political system. This popular accomplishment should be noted in the context of the huge sacrifices many citizens paid to realize the change.
The 23 percent of the Egyptian voters who alone moved enthusiastically to select a president out of a multiple list of candidates should be praised for the perseverance, self-respect, and determination they persistently exhibited to keep up the right to vote despite all expected, or even pre-calculated, results of the polls by the ruling party and its powerful executive and media apparatuses.
In this connection, writers should remember the real struggles and the prevailing subjection of brave individuals and groups in most Arab and African societies to heavy forms of security harassment and other serious atrocities, according to reports by the national and the international human rights organizations and other monitoring bodies, to frustrate the long-enduring efforts of these democratic entities to break the chain of the State bureaucratic repression in order to share the power monopoly of the single-party single-candidate governments of the region.
Composed of a disproportionate percentage of younger citizens than perhaps all of the other parties, Al-Gad Egyptian newly-established party, the second with only 7% of the cast, was most likely supported by the Muslim Brotherhood prohibited party. Once a ruling party of Egypt for decades before the single-party single-candidate government of Jamal Abdel-Nasser and his successors controlled the country, Al-Wafd, the oldest of all opposition groups, lost momentum – despite a strenuous effort in the 3 weeks that preceded the elections day to gain support of the workers and the middle class Egyptians.
The truth of the matter is that large sections of the voting middle class, including small businesses, professionals, and other middle-income people, have either joined ranks of the ruling party to ensure decent living conditions for their businesses, jobs, and families, or simply migrated to the Gulf and other receiving nations for a “good break.”
Furthermore, the seemingly unbreakable security grip of the State over opposition activities throughout the last 50 years or so has firmly perpetuated a climate of indifference amongst the working sections of the population that perhaps represented the bulk of the 70 million Egyptians. Hence, there is much effort required by the opposition and the ruling party to exert if they want to ensure larger participation of the population in the next elections.
The situation of the electoral process in Egypt, as it has been lately exhibited, mirrors the same symptoms in perhaps all other Arab or African nations. Uninterrupted authoritative bureaucracies, including incompetent democratically-elected governments, recessive economic conditions, non-developmental programs to alleviate poverty or to improve the living standards of the working force, negligent or very low political participation by women and the ethnic minorities, and a massive superimposition of State policies by single-party systems have corrupted the politics, economics, and cultural heritage of the Arab and the African regions for a long period of time.
The observers of the Egyptian elections have equally noted the significance of external pressures on the ruling authorities to open up a thin margin for opposition groups to participate in the pre-determined government-controlled election campaigns. As one commentator announced, “the small representation of opposition groups in the polls seemed to have been primarily encouraged as a political measure to satisfy external powers, rather than a real indicator of national involvement.”
Such comments are not quite fair, however: the external pressures were definitely needed to break the monopoly of a ruling party that never has been seriously challenged by the absented forces of the opposition for 5 decades. Some force, strong enough to impact the authoritative system, had to move on to help make a difference.
Most interestingly, Mr. Hafiz Abu-Si’da, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Human Rights Organization, correctly commented in a press conference in Cairo today that the peacefulness and the regularity of the presidential elections proved “there was no need of any sort to impose emergency law in Egypt. It is necessary to abrogate a law for which there is no need in the whole country.”
The way to avoid undesirable external pressures upon the Arab and the African states is quite clear. National regimes have the option to adhere, in principle, to a truthful democratization process to allow local independent judicial supervision besides uncensored regular monitoring by the civil society and the concerned regional and international supervisory bodies of elections – the same successful formula adopted by democracies all over the world.
Reflections on the Sudanese Arena
The Sudanese people have been carefully watching the presidential elections of their sisterly neighbor, Egypt.
True, the Sudan was not stressed in the political agenda of the electoral campaigns of the Egyptian ruling party or the other competing groups, despite substantial assurances of relations with Sudan and the other nations of the River Nile. And yet, one candidate staged his whole campaign to win the elections on the basis of unity with the Sudan.
The two countries, however, maintained close mutual ties since ancient history. In contemporary times, the Sudanese were able to overthrow two dictatorial regimes respectively in 1964 and 1985 when Egypt was strongly ruled at the same period of time by the same single-party single-candidate presidential system. Major differences, moreover, differentiated the struggles of the two peoples to gain public freedoms or a stable democratic rule.
One major difference is that the Sudanese targeted a complete change of the whole political system in their struggles to overthrow authoritative regimes instead of any piece-meal approach or a gradual transformation of authoritative regimes. The Egyptian counterparts, however, were rather content with a gradual change of the political system under the auspices of the ruling party itself (the Nasserist Socialist Union, which converted itself through the Sadat and the Mubarak reign to the existing National Party).
From their side, the Sudanese abolished the Nimieri’s Sudanese Socialist Party, rejected to the extent of civil wars the National Islamic Front’s governance. They never stopped, to this day, the resistance of the NIF’s ruling group, i.e., the National Congress Party.
Unlike the Egyptian case, where the ruling party was repeatedly able to legitimize State-sponsored changes (from a single party to a multiple forum of co-existing government and opposition groups, succeeded by a restricted form of government-controlled pluralism), all Sudanese governments failed to enforce political changes to the satisfaction of the Sudanese people who have always taken it upon themselves by both civil striving and armed struggles to change the repressive bureaucracies.
Most recently, it was the Naivasha Agreement, primarily an externally-fixed arrangement that legitimized the NIF pariah regime and made of it a patron of the country by international treaty. Undoubtedly, the lacking of the Naivasha arrangements to possess full national acceptance by a popular willingness to participation in the national decision making have already rendered it a very tedious task to accomplish in Sudanese political terms.
To succeed, the Comprehensive Agreement must successfully acquire national consent from all Sudanese players, not only the bilateral partners of the agreement. The mode of the Sudanese, being largely egalitarian in nature and in the apparent trend of the ongoing politico-administrative change (marked by excessively ethno-regional hostilities rather than the pre-NIF progressively transforming urban-rural collectivities), has always differentiated the peoples of Sudan sharply from the Egyptians’ unified polity.
Whereas the majority of Egyptian voters would indifferently act towards the electoral process, as they actually did this last week, or abstain from participation – in protest of the State’s monopoly – as the Tajamu leftists decided, or engage in silent alliance with the prohibited Brotherhood, as the Al-gad party performed, the Sudanese people would likely target the NIF-controlled Naivasha-based government as an undesirable regime, all in all, obviously because they were not enabled to be real partners of it.
Several months have already passed since the Naivasha agreement was finalized by the peace partners. The post-Naivasha negotiations, however, with the National Democratic Alliance “are getting no where”; the Umma large party is boycotting the regime’s transition; the other factions are threatening with hostilities and unfriendly opposition.
The ethno-regional feuds and an increasing enmity versus the ruling junta are unabated in the Eastern and Western regions of the Sudan; and the sudden loss of a great popular leader, the late Dr. John Garang de Mabior, has shockingly paralyzed significant areas of the political spectrum (especially amongst the North-South politically advanced democratic alliance) despite the competencies, political determination, and ethnic popularity of his respectable unionist successor, Mr. Salva Kiir Mayardit. By the Naivasha provisions, the “SPLM,” a major corner of the opposition, “would no longer work as both opposition and government;” many sources acknowledged.
Amidst these crises, growing rumors and a number of political writings in the Arab speaking journals suggest that the other major difference between the Egyptian and Sudanese national political adjustments would not end: the tendency of Sudanese opposition parties to conform to, deform, or reform alliances, as soon as a ruling regime evidently starts to fall, with a single aim of disintegrating and then replacing that regime!
This is perhaps an expectation many Sudanese are cautiously watching nowadays, similar to the situation of the Nimeiri rule in the last months of his reign (March/April 1985): the presidency and its ruling party (formerly the Sudanese Socialist Union, currently the Islamic National Congress) failed completely to convince the NDA and/or the Umma Party (the largest and most influential northern constituencies) to accept a 14 percent participation in the Transitional Government by the Naivasha Agreement.
The southern parties have not yet come to terms with the SPLM/A. The rush of the government to appoint selected members to the Transitional Parliament has been received with a full resentment from the opposition groups that strongly claimed “they never participated in the selection process.” Regrettably, the hopes of a stable transitional period via a largely-based national democratic regime are somewhat fading away in light of the consistent reluctance of the ruling junta to share political power with the opposition.
Those who closely know the Sudanese political life might have already accepted an assumption that the only change thus far made in the country’s scene was an “inclusionary” accommodation of government beneficiaries unto the NIF non-democratic regime vis-à-vis the formerly adopted exclusionary policies of the ruling junta. An angry statement by Mr. Hatim Elsir, the NDA spokesperson, nonetheless, condemned the hand-picked parliament with harsh criticisms to the new government as a whole.
“Nothing is yet changed,” one would hear both Egyptians and the Sudanese loudly saying, each on their own right.
“Let us wait and see. Perhaps the new term of office would bring more political activity and economic opportunity to our country,” said the Egyptians in their daily press these days.
“Nothing is yet changed,” said the Sudanese: “We might wait for a little while! We have already taken arms, however! A real government representing the diversity of the Nation is the only acceptable form of a democratization process, or a real national rule!”