Democracy

by Condoleezza Rice

  Our ambassador reported almost daily on events in Cairo. “I actually saw a story today,” he told me, “that accused Suzanne Mubarak [the president’s wife] of corruption. The cafés are full of people debating politics. It seems as if fear has broken down and the atmosphere is almost festival-like,” he said.

  Mubarak won, of course, with 88.6 percent of the vote. But he was terribly disappointed at the low turnout, suggesting that Egyptians had not considered the entire enterprise worthwhile. Still, those who did participate witnessed a new openness in Egyptian politics that might have laid the foundation for further progress. The election was obviously imperfect, but it was the first truly contested presidential election, a significant fact in post-Mubarak Egypt.

  Unfortunately, the presidential election was the high-water mark. Two months later, in November 2005, parliamentary elections were held. The Wafd Party and Tomorrow (Nour’s party) were unable to sustain their momentum, again hounded by the government and denied resources. The big winner was the Muslim Brotherhood, which claimed more than half the seats it contested through independent candidates. The National Democratic Party (of Mubarak) held 324 seats and the Brotherhood 88. All others held just 30.

  Mubarak was alarmed by what had happened in the elections. At my next meeting with him early in 2006, he all but accused the United States of strengthening the hand of the “Brothers,” as he called them. He looked directly at me and asked, “Are you satisfied?” Satisfied with what? I thought. He was referring to the election result.

  Then I remembered a conversation that explained that comment. During a meeting with Saudi king Abdullah, he told me that he now trusted me. He had come to believe, he said, that I didn’t want the Muslim Brotherhood to rule the Middle East after all. Where did that come from? And then I realized that it had come from the Egyptians. “I’m all that stands between the Muslim Brothers and Egypt”—that was always Mubarak’s trump card in any conversation about the virtues of democracy. He seemed honestly to believe that we viewed the Muslim Brotherhood favorably.

  In light of the electoral results at the end of 2005, the Egyptian government began backpedaling from the modest reforms it had made. In response to the jailing, once again, of Ayman Nour, I postponed consideration of the U.S.-Egyptian Free Trade Agreement. Doing so was a double-edged sword, because FTAs tend to empower more liberalizing elements in a society—opening the economy, undercutting corruption, and sometimes helping young people looking for opportunity.

  During a press conference with the Egyptian foreign minister, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post asked the question that I dreaded: “You met Ayman Nour here on your last trip here and now he faces a prison term after a trial on what appears to be trumped-up charges. His party is destroyed. How disappointed are you by that result, and what will you say to civil society representatives tomorrow as they struggle to develop under this authoritarian government?”

  I answered that I was of course disappointed. But I essentially said that I would tell them to keep trying, that progress is not always a straight line, and that we would support them.

  During a question on the postponement of the FTA, my mind wandered. I knew that my answer to Glenn had not been very satisfactory. So I took another crack at it. “Let me go back.… The president made very clear in his State of the Union that the United States would stand for the right of men and women in every corner of the earth to have the same rights and indeed the same responsibilities that we as Americans are fortunate enough to enjoy.… I came here to Cairo to give that speech because this is a central, perhaps the central, place in Arab civilization in terms of history, culture and scientific progress.… Egypt can and I think will lead this entire region in terms of economic and political reform.… That, I think, is a statement not just of hope but confidence.… We’re going to stay on course, continuing to discuss reform and the need to move forward toward democracy… and listen to all voices in Egyptian society, because it is really very critical that Egypt lead in this area.”15

  I looked out at the members of my traveling press corps—Glenn, Helene Cooper of the New York Times, Janine Zacharia of Bloomberg, Anne Gearan of the Associated Press, Arshad Mohammed of Reuters, and Andrea Mitchell of NBC, to name a few. They had watched March 14 rise in Lebanon. They had covered the Purple Finger election. They had seen the awakening of politics in Egypt. Now, at this disheartening moment for freedom in the region, I saw in these tough and skeptical journalists signs of empathy.

  They, like me, knew that Mubarak would not lead the region to change. Indeed, the regime doubled down on repression. The hated law on emergency powers was extended for two years. Most had expected that it would be lifted. A new constitutional referendum in 2007 further tightened the requirements for independent candidates to run, hoping to stall the progress of the Muslim Brothers but limiting other political forces as well. Violence spiked against opposition rallies and detention of activists of all stripes increased. Mubarak systematically stripped away the nascent institutions that might have helped Egyptians—many of whom shared his secular orientation—to make a democratic transition.

  This would turn out to be his last chance for peaceful change. The president sealed the fate of his regime when he backed away from the political opening of 2005. Now it was only a matter of time until the tired and illegitimate regime could no longer hold power.

  The denouement came in December 2010, when a fed-up street vendor in neighboring Tunisia set himself on fire. His death sparked a social-media-driven revolution across the Middle East, as popular protests forced the departure of Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali—a first in Arab history. Now there was nothing standing between the octogenarian Egyptian president and his angry and despondent people. They turned on him, calling for his ouster. “Erhal!” (“Leave!”) became the slogan of the day.

  The young people in the streets desperately wanted to embrace a democratic and brighter future. The population in the region had doubled over thirty years: 60 percent of Middle Easterners were twenty-five years old or younger. Tired, corrupt governments could not provide for them. The Middle East Monitor spoke of “a visceral sense of national humiliation and lack of self-esteem.”16

  A Second Chance for Democracy

  As frustrated citizens poured out into places like Tahrir Square, there was another momentary opening for democratic change. But the energy in Cairo and other major cities was without direction and political purpose. Ayman Nour tried to channel the passions of the moment, and so did Kefaya, but they were spent forces—wasted in earlier struggles with the government. The Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei came home, but he had been out of the country too long—doing important work at the IAEA, but disconnected from Egypt’s aspirations. The secular forces that the president should have nourished years before were unable to cohere at this crucial moment.

  Mubarak tried belatedly to save his regime. He fired his cabinet but refused to step down, appointing a vice president for the first time in his presidency—Omar Suleiman. Clashes between government and anti-regime forces took place daily as security forces failed to maintain order.

  Two months into the crisis, Mubarak continued to insist that he would hold power until elections could be called. In a dramatic speech on February 10, 2011, he finally said that he would not run in the next election, though he would discharge his duties until then. It was too late—the Egyptian people were calling for his immediate ouster, and some for his head. He resigned the next day, transferring power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The military would then oversee a hurried process to write an interim constitution. Many worried that the rapid move to elections would give secular forces little time to gather themselves and compete. They were right. The well-organized Muslim Brotherhood—now legal as a political party—won an impressive victory in peaceful elections across the country. When the several rounds of parliamentary balloting were done, the Brotherhood controlled 47 percent of the seats. A second and even more conservative Islamist
party controlled another 24 percent. Though the Brotherhood had promised not to run a presidential candidate, it did. Mohamed Morsi won, the first Islamist to be elected head of state in the Arab world. Mubarak’s nightmare had come true—and it was, at least in part, his own doing. He more than any single figure was responsible for the barren political landscape and the dominance of “the Brothers.”

  Of course the story did not end there. The Muslim Brotherhood’s brief reign in Egypt was tumultuous and incompetent. The country was in serious economic trouble, experiencing catastrophic declines in foreign reserves and a slide in the value of the currency. Morsi begged for assistance, promising economic reforms to meet IMF conditions for a $4.8 billion loan package. The United States granted Egypt $250 million but told the president it would closely monitor how he governed.

  While seeking foreign assistance, however, Morsi seemed intent on doing everything to drive a wedge between his government and millions of secular Egyptians and religious minorities. The draft constitution did not provide safeguards for the rights of women. And, according to Morsi’s critics, the document would have given Al-Azhar, Egypt’s oldest university and one of Sunni Islam’s highest authorities, power to pass judgment on the religious merits of the nation’s laws.

  Under pressure, Morsi kept pledging compromise, but the Islamic and autocratic tilt of his policies and their effects continued. He was blamed, whether fairly or not, for attacks on religious minorities and those seen as insufficiently respectful of Islam. The arrest of a popular television satirist, Bassem Youssef, on March 30 for insulting Islam and Morsi seemed to demonstrate an inextricable link between the president and his religious beliefs. Less than a week later a group of Muslims attacked the main cathedral of the Coptic Orthodox Church where a funeral for Christians killed in sectarian violence was being held. The head of the church, Pope Tawadros II, blamed the president for not protecting them.

  Morsi did nothing to quiet his critics. In fact, he seemed to double down, increasing the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. He appointed Islamists to thirteen of the twenty-seven governorships in the country. If he had any intention of bringing Egyptians together to bridge their religious differences in democratic institutions, he hid it well. Violent protests again swept the country, with millions of Morsi supporters and millions of his critics facing off as the future of Egypt hung in the balance.

  On July 1, the army gave the president forty-eight hours to engage the opposition and find a solution. He did not, and on July 3 he was ousted. Thousands of demonstrators cheered the military takeover. Thousands more protested it. Violence continued for several months more, but in time, the army reestablished order.

  Presidential elections, reminiscent of an earlier time, were held. Just two candidates participated and General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi won. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood were arrested, and many, including Morsi, sit in jails today, a death sentence on their heads.

  And that is where Egypt now stands. For the fourth time in its modern history, a military man rules the country. As for most of the past sixty years, the state of emergency is in full force. The parliament is largely a rubber stamp. NGOs, especially those with foreign donors, are under siege. And the Muslim Brotherhood is jailed, while some of its adherents have gone underground—a fifth column within Egypt promoting violence and engaging in terrorism. The democratic openings of 2005 and 2011 seem very far in the past.

  Yet, despite these dark prospects and the repression unleashed by the Sisi regime, the dream of a freer and more democratic Egypt lives on. It can be seen in the stories of activists who, at great personal risk to themselves, continue to advocate for reforms. One such figure, a young Egyptian woman who studied law and human rights in the West, returned to Egypt in 2011 to help her country realize its full potential. She and her colleagues—and millions of like-minded Egyptians—persevered through the roller-coaster ride that followed Mubarak. In 2014 she was arrested for taking part in a protest outside the Presidential Palace. It was a rally against a harsh new ban on protests. Her case drew public attention when she was sentenced to three years in prison, and she used it to shine a spotlight on the thousands of prisoners who suffer unnoticed, facing worse conditions and even abuse. Sisi eventually relented to international calls for her release, but not before she had spent more than 450 days behind bars. In doing so, she joined the long line of democracy activists, from Gandhi to Mandela, who have paid the high price of imprisonment in order for their country to have a better chance at freedom.

  Now released and undeterred, this young activist and others like her are the reason to have hope for Egypt. They have learned hard lessons about the challenges before them, and they have proved themselves willing to bear the burdens of their cause. Someday Egypt’s future will be brighter, and they will have another opportunity to build their dream. It might be a far-off and distant future. But those who think otherwise discount the human yearning to live free.

  Tunisia Shows the Way

  Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest tyranny and injustice under the Ben Ali regime. He was a simple man who was fed up with the daily humiliation of paying bribes to keep his small business alive. His country has had challenges since Ben Ali fell in January 2011. But, unlike Egypt, Tunisia has overcome the obstacles in its path—at least so far. It has approved a new constitution with support from secularists and Islamists. It has found a place in the new system for people who had been exiled by the old regime, as well as former members of that regime. It has held several free and fair elections at the local and national levels. And, in the years following Ben Ali’s ouster, it has peacefully transferred power from one party to another on more than one occasion.

  Ben Ali and Mubarak looked like carbon copies of each other—tired, isolated men who had lost touch with the problems and aspirations of their people. So why has Tunisia succeeded thus far where Egypt failed?

  Like Egypt under Mubarak, Tunisia under Ben Ali had a prominent Islamist organization that was banned by the government but survived underground. Like the Brotherhood, Tunisia’s main Islamist group, called Ennahda, reemerged to play a central role in the attempt to form a new and more democratic government. But unlike the Brotherhood, Ennahda has so far adopted a more conciliatory approach to its political rivals, and it has demonstrated a willingness to share and even relinquish power. This is not simply because Tunisian Islamists are more moderate or prone to compromise, although that may be part of the explanation, particularly among the top leadership. It is also because Ennahda and the other actors in Tunisian politics face an environment in which compromise offers the best alternative to conflict. There are multiple forces that balance each other. As some scholars have argued, the most important reason why Tunisia has been more successful than Egypt is not because “all sides wanted democracy, but rather that all sides had no choice but to settle for democracy.”17

  The Tunisian institutional landscape is richer than that of Egypt. Ennahda is one of several organizations competing for power. It has had to contend with a variety of other actors—from an independent national labor movement, to a new political party backed by allies of the old regime, to a populace willing to return to the streets if it feels the “revolution” has been betrayed—all of which have been powerful forces in preventing Ennahda from asserting its dominance in the same manner as the Brotherhood attempted to do.18

  In Tunisia, an influential player in post-2011 politics has been the country’s national labor union, which was part of a coalition of civil society groups—including lawyers, human rights activists, and others—that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. Tunisia’s national labor union played an integral role in the country’s independence struggle of the 1950s and has always maintained some autonomy from the ruling regime. Egypt’s national labor union, conversely, has always been more or less an extension of the state, and it lacked the nationalist legitimacy required to play an effective independent role after 2011. If Mubarak had opened more political space
in the mid-2000s, and done more to foster the independence of institutions like labor unions and the judiciary, Egyptians would have been better positioned to take advantage of the opening they created in Tahrir Square in 2011. Instead, at least for now, that moment has passed.

  But just as Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation was a spark that set the region ablaze, the story of Tunisia’s struggle for democracy continues to reverberate outside its borders, and nowhere more so than in Egypt. Tunisia’s victories are fragile, and its future setbacks are certain. But its experience offers lessons for pro-democracy forces around the region.

  The Tunisian example demonstrates the importance of a diverse institutional landscape. The country has a vibrant civil society that has been actively engaged at every stage of the post–Ben Ali transition. Often, pro-democracy forces are isolated from the larger population, led by intellectuals and operating largely in major cities. In Tunisia, the nationwide labor union, reminiscent of Solidarity in Poland, gave the opposition stronger footing and legitimacy with the population as a whole. The richness of the landscape was a check on more extreme factions—particularly among the Islamists. When draft language limiting the rights of women was being debated for the constitution, an uproar among women’s groups and other members of civil society forced its proponents to retreat. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a quartet of Tunisian civil society groups because of their role in mediated disputes during the tumultuous process of establishing a democratic government. Although that process continues to this day—and will hopefully continue well into the future—it was a timely recognition of the power of these groups and the important role they can play.