Egypt's Constitutional Amendments

Cleopatras Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Egypt's Constitutional Amendments

For those who've been failed by their own media sources, Egypt is holding a national referendum tomorrow on a number of constitutional amendments that are billed as "part of a reform package" (the ruling party doesn't go into any more detail than that) but will actually remove all judicial oversight from elections, codify presidential "anti-terrorism" powers including arbitrary indefinite detention of anyone for no reason, and just generally wreck any chance Egypt could have of becoming a decent, functioning political entity anytime in the near future. For a general overview of the situation, read this; if you want a more through analysis of the amendments themselves and the threat they pose for Egypt's political scene, read this; if you want commentary on the US State Dept's nearly complete abandonment of pushing Egypt towards any political reform, read through this blog. Also Baheyya is always awesome, but she doesn't write enough.

The reason I'm concerned about the US response is not because of some essentialist conviction that Arabs can't handle democracy and therefore require external pressures and force from abroad. It's simply because with regards to Egypt, the government couldn't possibly operate a functional tax bureaucracy (2 years ago, less than 5% of Cairenes paid taxes at all; recent tax reforms have perhaps doubled this number but it's still like 8% or so; and even then, it's largely due to local branches of foreign companies paying because otherwise they'd get into legal trouble back home), so it's is responsive to its bankrollers - which means US military aid, which comes to about 2% of Egypt's annual GDP. Anywhere in life, where you get your money from is whom you're responsive to. And it's been proven a number of times, in fact, that

the US is the only significant force with any leverage for political reform in Egypt. The democracy push in 2005 brought about all sorts of reforms, albeit most of them token, and US support did embolden democracy activists in the region and provide them all sorts of cover. Political space definitely opened up. Egypt is not a puppet (especially now that the US, having lost two wars, needs to suck up to everyone in the world) but the US does have significantly more influence over the Egyptian government than the Egyptian people themselves do. (It's also always strange thinking, when I get into a scuff with an Egyptian cop, that my taxes pay his salary. And that's before I even factor in how many tourist dollars I bring in.)

So anyway, the referendum is tomorrow (Monday March 26), and most of the opposition has decided to boycott because they know the election results will be fixed, and that they'd just be legitimizing a farce if they voted. But the purpose of having this national referendum is so that the government can claim, for the sake of greater international legitimacy, to have the support of the majority of the Egyptian people (for the same reason every crackpot dictatorship has to call itself the 'democratic republic' of whatever), and so the way to take that way is to have a mass media spectacle protest. Usually these are downtown, in the main Tahrir square, in front of the Arab League building, the Mugamma (civil service bldg, where you go for visas and licenses and whatnot), the American University in Cairo, etc. So today's is about to start.

The government has sworn not to allow any protests or demonstrations, that they must be prevented from "delaying, opposing and stalling the democratic process". So the lines have been drawn...