What Does Mohamed ElBaradei Want?

 

What Does Mohamed ElBaradei Want?

 

 

 

by Alaa El Aswany

 

Do you have a child in the the sixth grade? If you do, please take a look at his social studies textbook, starting at page 101. You'll find a large section, several pages long and illustrated with pictures, explaining what it calls Hosni Mubarak's achievements over thirty years.  The lesson uses the expression 'President Mubarak' (not 'former' or 'deposed') and, after expounding on what he did in foreign policy, the economy and 'social solidarity', it adds a one-sentence reference to the Egyptian revolution. "But these attempts by President Mubarak were not enough to satisfy the people, which rose up to change the regime," the text says. This is what our children are learning about Hosni Mubarak and the revolution – a long account of his mythical achievements and not a single word about his heinous crimes against Egyptians, and in the end one short, obscure and confused sentence about the revolution. What are schoolchildren meant to think when they learn by heart Mubarak's alleged achievements and then see pictures of him on trial, lying on his gurney in the dock. No doubt the children will see Mubarak as a great man who has been wronged and they will hate the revolution that overthrew him. This is just one example of the lies with which the Ministry of Education twists the minds of Egyptian schoolchildren: we have recently seen several passages in school exams that accuse the revolutionaries of corruption and national revolutionary movements such as Kefaya and April 6 of being foreign-funded agents. These fallacious and misleading passages do not reflect the work of individuals. They are the public policy of the Ministry of Education, which includes a formidable bureaucratic machine for setting curricula and exams. The ministry officials cannot set a political text without consulting their bosses, who receive the political orientation required from the highest political authority they can access. The school texts loyal to Mubarak and hostile to the revolution are one of many phenomena proving that the Mubarak regime still rules Egypt. In a few days it will be the first anniversary of the revolution, so which of its objectives has it achieved:?

    First, in every country where a revolution has succeeded in overthrowing the regime, the old constitution has lapsed automatically and a constituent assembly has been elected to write a new constitution that reflects the revolution and carries out its objectives. But in Egypt the military council refused to write a new constitution and instead revived Hosni Mubarak's proposal to make limited amendments to the old constitution and then put it to a referendum. After that the council in effect ignored the referendum and promulgated an interim constitution of 63 articles that it then imposed on the people without consulting it. The military council deprived Egypt of an opportunity to write the constitution properly after the revolution. If we had done that, we would now have true democracy.

    Second, the revolution broke out in order to restore the dignity of Egyptians. It demanded the abolition of the State Security agency, which had become a slaughterhouse where thousands of Egyptians were tortured and their humanity violated. But the military council insisted on preserving State Security and made do with merely changing its name to National Security. The revolution called for the police force to be purged of senior officers loyal to the Mubarak regime and for serious trials for those who killed demonstrators, but the military council kept the police force as it was and the officers who killed demonstrators, even after going on trial in a process that is slow and endless, have retained their jobs. Some of them have been promoted. The military council has also taken an apathetic stand towards the breakdown in law and order that has resulted from the failure of the civilian police to do their duty, and it's amazing that the military police, who brutally suppress demonstrations, do not lift a finger when they see Egyptians obstructing railway lines for between two days and a week (as happened in Qena). The military council seems to be working to add to people's hardships after the revolution,  to instil in them a  deep hatred of the revolution.

       Third, the military council has left in place most of the senior officials affiliated with the Mubarak regime in practice and ideologically, so lo and behold we see the same performance and the same mentality. Dr Ganzouri, the prime minister, promises to protect the people staging a sit-in outside the cabinet offices, but when they are killed and women are dragged along the ground and abused, Ganzouri feels no embarrassment about his baseless promise. He then talks about a grave economic crisis threatening Egypt and in the same week we discover that the governor of the central bank has kept 55 billion pounds in Hosni Mubarak's name, separate from the state budget. The same farces that used to happen in Mubarak's time, as if Egypt hadn't had a revolution.

    Fourth, most judges in Egypt are independent and follow their consciences but the judicial system itself is not independent because the judges are subject to the Judicial Inspectorate, the head of which is appointed by the Minister of Justice, who in turn is appointed by the president. The revolution demanded judicial independence and a purge of the judges who supervised rigged elections, but the military council retained the judges who did the rigging, and obstructed the judicial independence law. Now we can see the consequences: in three successive massacres 84 demonstrators have been killed, either run over by armoured vehicles, gassed or shot with live ammunition. Thousands have been injured, dozens have lost eyes, dozens of women have been dragged along the ground and molested. So far there have been no serious trials of the security or army personnel who committed these crimes. On the contrary, young revolutionary Ahmed Douma has been arrested and imprisoned, revolutionaries have been summoned to face imaginary charges, and the public prosecution has accused the writer Nawara Negm of 'giving public opinion the mistaken impression that corruption still exists'. I don't know where they dug up this charge, which has no basis in any legal text. A decree has been issued banning revolutionary activists Mamdouh Hamza and Ayman Nour from travelling, while Omar Suleiman, the number two in the Mubarak regime, travels freely on private planes, meeting kings and presidents.

    Fifth, the military council held unfair elections by which it wanted to give the majority of the seats in parliament to Islamist groups. It allowed them to form religious political parties (in clear violation of Article 4 of the constitutional declaration written by the council itself), and the military council set up a supreme electoral commission that turned a blind eye to all kinds of electoral and political irregularities by the religious parties, starting with political propaganda in mosques, to vote-buying, putting pressure on voters inside and in front of polling stations, to the millions of pounds the Muslim Brotherhood and the salafists spent, without any monitoring by the military council, who monitor only those activists who criticize its policies, such as human rights organizations and the April 6 movement, which the council has accused of receiving money from abroad while completely unable to prove such accusations. I'm not against followers of political Islam, since they are patriotic Egyptians who have my full respect but the truth must be told: the judiciary will decide if these elections are rigged or not, but in any case they were not fair elections.  

    After a full year the Egyptian revolution has not achieved any of its objectives other than the trial of Mubarak, about which there are many suspicions. The military council has turned the revolution into a coup. Instead of the comprehensive change that would pave the way for  a democratic state, the military council has made do with changing the ruler. We are now discovering that we replaced one despotic authority with another. Everything in Egypt is done at the wishes of the military council alone and if things continue in this manner we will have a president elected at the will of the military council, which will guide him from behind the scenes. These are the details of the scenario that made Dr Mohamed ElBaradei announce that he was dropping out of the presidential race. ElBaradei's position is significant in many ways, most importantly in that it shows he is an honourable and honest man and that his loyalty to the revolution far exceeds his desire for any office. ElBaradei did the honourable thing, refusing to bargain with his principles or make deals for the sake of coming to power, if only over the corpses of the dead, as others have done. ElBaradei refused to deceive us by playing the role of presidential candidate in a sham democracy. Does anyone believe that under present circumstances any candidate can win the presidency without the consent of the military council? The answer is a decisive no. How can we expect fair presidential elections under the shadow of repressive security agencies that are waging a relentless war against their opponents, kidnapping and torturing them, and deploying tens of thousands of thugs who turn up when necessary and commit crimes at will and with impunity? How can we expect decent presidential elections when the judiciary is not independent, with an electoral commission that does nothing to stop electoral abuses, and with a a corrupt and misleading media accustomed to receiving instructions from security and to maligning the opposition for the sake of those in power? How can we expect decent elections in the presence of senior police officers loyal to Mubarak and of a military police force whose members assaulted dozens of judges in the recent elections when they insisted on accompanying the ballot boxes to the counting centres.

    The message that ElBaradei wants to convey to the people is clear: we cannot bring about real change with the same old instruments. We cannot build a real democracy when the Mubarak regime is still in power. We cannot build a modern state until we have removed the old regime with all its corruption. The Egyptian revolution succeeded in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak but the military council took it off course and went off in the wrong direction, preserving the Mubarak regime as it was. It is the duty of us all to insist on achieving the objectives of the revolution. The only legitimacy in Egypt will remain the legitimacy of the revolution until all its objectives are met. The next parliament – although we have reservations about it – is in the end the only body elected by Egyptians, so the national interest, in my opinion, obliges us to accept it. But its legitimacy will be determined by its performance.  If the parliament carries out the objectives of the revolution, it will be a legitimate parliament. But if it makes deals and alliances detrimental to the revolution and squanders the rights of Egyptians, then it will lose legitimacy. So we all have a duty to go out on January 25 in peaceful demonstrations to affirm that the revolution continues. I hope that millions of Egyptian in all provinces come out on the streets to declare clearly that the revolution they made with their blood, and for which they paid with their lives and their eyes, will never fail and will never abandon its objectives. The revolution is the truth, and everything else is a baseless sham. The revolution is the future and all those hostile to it belong to the past. The revolution will triumph, God willing, so that Egypt can start to live the future.

    Democracy is the solution.                                    

 

    

 

 

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