Nothing like a little rhyme to start things off (completely unintentional, I might add).
Yes, Mubarak was unpopular amongst the people. But, it was the military that ultimately pushed him out and it is 2 senior generals who dissolved parliament, suspended the Constitution and are now running things. Even the most optimistic of observers have to call it a military junta (the Australian pronunciation of which was quite an amusing little topic over on Twitter- led, in my feed, by the ABC's Mark Colvin. For the record, I pronounce it "yoon-tah"), at least until we see evidence of real democratic reform.
Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong so far with the military coup so far, just because it is a military coup. It was obviously a popular event...it's the next step that has me worried. After all, it was a military coup that has been the cause of the last 50 years of military autocratic rule in Egypt....including Mubarak.
Then we have the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite the fears of most Western commentators (who were likely the same ones who would have said "We need to support Mubarak for stability in the Middle East") the Muslim Brotherhood has declared that they will not be putting forward a candidate in the free elections that are purported to come later this year. Whilst there are those (Israel, I'm looking at you) who would dismiss that as pure populism, it needs to be borne in mind that, as reported by James Taub of Foreign Policy Magazine:
In a free election, the Brothers would have swamped the NDP, but instead, they only contested a quarter of the seats in the People's Assembly; they did not want to provoke a backlash by an imperiled regime.
Simply put, if the Muslim Brotherhood had wanted to seize power they could have done it years ago. The fact they didn't and (from the same article) state that:
We want a government based on civil law, with an Islamic source of lawmaking.
And just what is an "Islamic source of lawmaking?" Muhammad Habib, then the Muslim Brotherhood's deputy supreme guide -- its second-ranking official-- explained to me that, under such a system, parliament would seek the advice of religious scholars on issues touching upon religion, though such views could never be binding. A democratically elected parliament, he asserted, would still have the "absolute right" to pass a law the Brotherhood deemed "un-Islamic." And the proper redress for religious objections would be a formal appeal process in the constitutional court.
Hardly the stuff espoused by those champing at the bit to impose an Iranian style theocracy upon Egypt now, isn't it?
I think the discomfort with any sort of religious input into lawmaking, formal or otherwise has precarious implications for the plurality of any one society.
ReplyDeleteI worry that the potential for the brotherhood to fantasise is great considering the interconnected nature of Middle Eastern politics. The examples I would use is the destabilisation of Iraq by Iranian militants, and the destabilisation of Lebanon by the Syrian backed Hezbollah. What is the say that Al Qaeda doesn't influence or at worse infiltrate the Muslim brotherhood and transform it into a proxy arm of itself. This is not unprecedented either with elements of Palastine's Fatah Party being compromised by Islamic Jihad.
Of course, this is all academic. And as we discussed before, a wait and see approach seems the most prudent path going ahead. The Egyptians must be allowed to determine their own future based on their own priorities. Although I hope that they institute a checks and balances constitution rather than what development scholar Paul Collier describes as "instant democracy", void of any particular institutions to allow for a stable society.