In countries like Egypt, both the Islamists and the ‘secular’ Army are equally problematic for the people. The Army does not want genuine democracy and the Islamists do not wish to promote real inclusiveness in governance
On Sunday, the 38.6 per cent of the Egyptian electorate overwhelmingly approved the new Constitution in a farcical referendum. Also, 98 per cent of this 38.6 per cent voted ‘Yes’ for the new Constitution, which now clears the way to the election of a new Parliament and a President. The new Constitution gives the Army the right to appoint the Defence Minister for the next eight years, and bans the creation of any party based on “religion, race, gender or geography”.
But any ameliorating effect expected from this process, like in the previous 2012 referendum under President Mohamed Morsi, is a delusion at best. The referendum in 2012 had approved an Islamist-tinged Constitution, with 32.86 per cent of the population voting and 63.83 per cent of those 32 per cent approving. The 98 per cent approval of the 2014 referendum — unlike the bitterly contested 2012 referendum, was achieved on the back of an unprecedented campaign of violence, intimidation and harassment.
A carefully coordinated campaign of mass arrests and shootings has all but crippled the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formally outlawed in December 2013. Almost no critic of the new document was given airtime, and if he or she sought to express their views through other mediums, they were immediately arrested.
People were simply arrested for hanging up ‘No’ signs, and blanket travel bans on high-profile ‘No’ people were imposed to prevent them from appearing on foreign media stations. Journalists reporting back on crackdowns were also arrested under charges of ‘broadcasting false news’, ‘harm(ing) national security’, ‘disturb(ing) the public order’. State prosecutors then justified this, claiming, “The public prosecution points out that the Egyptian penal code criminalises publicising matters that may influence the work of the judges or the members of the public prosecution in the cases before them and influence the public opinion to the favour of any party. The people were urged not to “contradict what’s proven in the fair judicial investigations, which would only damage the country’s reputation.”
As every history textbook of the Middle East teaches us, if an Islamist Opposition comes to power, whether it openly says so or not, its motto remains: ‘One man (no woman), one vote, one time only’. Whether the rulers openly proclaim this, as the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front did in 1991, or do not — by design or default — they effectively pave the way towards this end.
The issue was, and remains, the fact that these nations (much like India) are acute governance-deficit states. Identity politics, therefore, gives individuals a hope that they can get their specific demands heard and acted on. However, like all identity politics, this is mere demagoguery unless the entire system is purged. This is where the system of checks and balances has to be challenged if the status quo has to be challenged, and the inability to do so results both in the abandonment of governance and radicalisation of identity. In India, this has contributed to the spread of caste politics, but on the other hand, it has also prevented the emergence of an ‘Islamic’ Opposition that subsumes the many divisions within India’s Muslims.
This is where the Egyptian Constitution has a built-in disaster clause — namely the banning of parties based on “religion, race, gender or geography”. What this means is that Egypt’s long repressed and harassed Copts will not have a separate voice of their own and will continue to remain under the effective concentration camp-state run by the Army with a Judenrat-style leadership.
This will also mean that Egypt’s restive ethnic minorities — the Bedouin in the Sinai, the Berbers, the Nubians, the Beja and the Dom — will have little room for protest. When this new Government falters, and it invariably will, these sub-nationalities will have little option but to turn to turn to militant Islam — possibly in a form far worse than the Brotherhood and certainly much more violent, given the Army’s repression. This is exactly what happened with the Touareg Berbers in Mali.
There are no easy solutions here. As things stand, the Army controls the economy and, as this author has argued in these very columns, it will not allow a change in status quo. The moment it feels threatened, it will destabilise a democratically-elected Government — once it is confident it can repress the Opposition. If one gets rid of the Army, the checks and balances on radical Islam disappear. If, however, one drives the Islamists underground, they will emerge far more blood thirsty and ruthless — proof of this being terrorists like Mohamed Atta and militant Islamists like Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Perhaps the closest comparison of the 2014 vote then is to the fatally flawed and equally rigged 2012 Syrian constitutional referendum held by President Bashar al-Assad. It effectively ended the one party Ba’athist state, but then again banned party formation on “ethnic, religious, regional and tribal basis”. That referendum saw a 57.41 per cent turnout and was approved by a massive 89.42 per cent of the voters, amounting to about 7.5 million votes. Yet, within weeks, Syria had descended into a horrific civil war that earlier this year saw the terrible use of chemical weapons.
The difference between Egypt and Syria thus far has been the role of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. While in Egypt, the latter two countries’ support for the Brotherhood has not crossed into actual weapons, training and incitement, in Syria it very rapidly did. This was more because Syria was a critical element in the Shia Arc that bogged down Wahhabi crazies in their own backyard, rather than allowed them to spread their philosophy and gentle non-violent methods to far flung places like Beslan. On the other hand, as news reports have indicated, the Saudis have used terrorists — specifically the attacks on Volgograd and a looming threat over the Sochi Olympics, to attempt to strong-arm Russia into abandoning Mr Assad.
The message for India, however, is simple. No matter who is in power in the Middle East and irrespective of the strength or weakness of the Shia Arc, the Saudi funding of terror will always keep this country in the crosshairs. That’s the bare truth.