Blogging the democratic revolution
Even with the winner a foregone conclusion, the unprecedented multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt started today. The official campaign period for Egypt’s landmark presidential election opened Wednesday. Ten men, including sitting President Hosni Mubarak, are vying for the presidency in the country’s first multi-candidate election. The three leading contenders for the presidency all scheduled rallies for Wednesday to launch their election campaigns. Incumbent President Hosni Mubarak decided not to wait for the rally and took out a full-page ad in Egypt’s largest newspaper, the government-run Al-Ahram. A private television station bought space on another page, trumpeting its exclusive coverage of…
Yesterday Robert posted an entry, Pro-Mubarak Thugs Beat Up Kefaya Protesters, dealing with the attempt by democracy activists in Egypt to hold a rally and Hosni Mubarak’s violent reaction. There is also an article in today’s New York Times (registration required) on this, so I won’t go into the details. I wanted to add that there are some new photos of the attacks on protesters. You can see them here and here. (Hat tip: The Arabist Network) I would like to suggest that now is a good time for President Bush to announce that the United States is ending its…
Jim Hoft is rounding up all the news on this. In other news, the candlelight vigil against terrorism being organized by Egyptian bloggers was cancelled. Big Pharaoh posts his reaction. Egyptian Sandmonkey is also feeling melancholy, and so is Karim Elsahy. Better luck next time guys, I wish it would have worked out.
In the wake of terrorist bombings against his country, Egypt’s President Mubarak has declared his candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections. Not that there was any doubt that he’d run for a fifth term, but now he has a platform to go on. President Hosni Mubarak announced his bid yesterday to run in Egypt’s first multicandidate elections on Sept. 7, promising new legislation to “besiege” terrorism and replace the country’s much-criticized emergency laws. Mubarak, 77, Egypt’s leader for almost a quarter of a century and a key U.S. ally in the Arab world, has cast himself as a moderating influence…
This is a roundup for the Egyptian blogosphere (plus some other Arab blogs) and the protests against terrorism which they are organizing. I’ll be updating this post as I get new links. I would like to note that I was in Luxor, Egypt in December 1997, shortly after the gunning down of foreign tourists at the Temple of Hapsetshut there. It really hurt the local people and they were very angry. There were signs in the streets saying “No to Terrorism” in Arabic only; this wasn’t a campaign for foreign consumption. There was also an Arabic-only interview with Egyptian national…
Last Tuesday I posted an entry about Egypt, Egypt Legalizes Moderate Islamist Movement, which suggested a watershed event for the Wasat (Center) Party, a moderate Islamist front. I also posted the same entry on my blog, and a reader who is apparently from Egypt made the point that there is still a level of review above the court which approved Wasat’s political license, and that the government has in the past used this higher level review to disapprove of parties. My post may therefore have overstated the significance of this event. You can read the comment and my response at…
Big Pharaoh posts what he thinks each religion should do in order to make the world a better place. There are many I don’t agree with, but then again, I find some of them both agreeable and hilarious. Allah does not give a dead rat’s ass about a girl’s hair. If you’re sexually excited when you see a girl’s hairs then you’re the sick pervert. Hijab is not a fard (obligation). It does not add or decrease the “good points” that a girl gets when she makes it to heaven. Perceived verses about women’s covering were for the women of…
Kirk let me know about this a couple of days ago. It’s interesting, because you see several groups ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to Kifaya coming together to put a crack in the current system. This is a trend in all authoritarian countries with emerging oppositions, but nonetheless, these are some unlikely temporary bedfellows. In any case, expect Kirk to have more on this later, but here’s the news anyhow. CAIRO, Egypt ???????? Opposition movements from across Egypt’s political spectrum joined in opposition to President Hosni Mubarak Wednesday with calls for a boycott of September’s presidential vote ???????? heralded by…
Al-Hayat has reported that an Egyptian court has legalized a moderate Islamist political movement (“Egypt: Judge Qubtay Grants Islamist Party a License by Decree“). Under Egyptian law, political organizations have to have a license to operate, and the country’s largest Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, is still denied one. This decree means that the New Center Party, led by Abu Ala Madi, an engineer, is the only legal Islamist party in Egypt. The article notes that this decision overrules a decision by the state Council for Party Affairs. The party, associated with what in Egypt is referred to as al-wasatiyya…
Big Pharaoh posts this. I think it’s extremely revealing and effective. It shows the progress of female status in Egyptian society over the years. 1900-1920 1920-1940 1940-1975 2005 2020? 2050?
Kirk just yesterday wrote a great article detailing the way that the U.S. strategy is moving forward to deal with political reform in Egypt. I think linking our aid to moves in the direction of sustained political openness is definitely the best way to go. In light of reading his article, I though I’d check to see if there have been any immediate after-effects, and indeed, it appears as if Mubarak has allowed a protest to go unhindered by the riot police. CAIRO — Egyptian police opened the streets of north Cairo yesterday to political protests for and against President…
I have traditionally been a supporter of the foreign aid that the United States gives to the Egyptian government, mainly on the premise that the soft authoritarianism of Hosni Mubarak’s government was the only alternative to an Islamist takeover which could throw the region into war. Following the 9/11 attacks and further reflection, however, I have come to the view that Mubarak’s stifling government and our close relationship with it breeds anti-Americanism, and furthermore acts as an incubator for militant Islamism because all non-Islamist civil society is snuffed out. On Tuesday, Congress passed its $20 billion foreign aid budget which…
It is not unusual for countries to have “rubber-stamp” parliaments, but they don’t usually make it as obvious as Egypt does. I recently posted a roundup on Egypt’s ruff-up of the opposition in the recent referendum meant to endorse a change to the election law which would superficially allow for open elections while in reality guaranteeing continued dominence of the ruling party. If you missed it and haven’t followed events in Egypt lately, you might want to read that for background. Yet now evidence has appeared which shows that the ruling party of President Hosni Mubarak, the National Democratic Party,…
It has been widely reported that the referendum on Egypt’s new electoral system was marred by violence. The referendum was passed with 82% of the vote with 54% participation amid a widespread boycott by both Islamist and secularist opposition parties. Meanwhile, multiple accounts were given of opposition protesters being physically attacked by supporters of President Hosni Mubarak and his National Democratic Party. (See my pre-referendum post, Egypt Clamps Down on the Muslim Brotherhood, which provides some background and discusses some of the issues regarding reform in Egypt.) But how bad was the violence? The Egyptian government, unsurprisingly, is arguing that…
While the French are doing their level best to scuttle the EU constitution, Egyptian voters go to the polls today to vote on a referendum to clear the way to multi party presidential elections: CAIRO, Egypt (AP) – President Hosni Mubarak urged Egyptians to vote in Wednesday’s referendum on constitutional changes that would clear the way for the nation’s first multi-candidate presidential elections. Opponents of the referendum were hard to find in the early hours of polling, but it wasn’t clear whether their absence was due to opposition calls to boycott the referendum because of the proposed strict rules on…
Egypt’s parliament has just passed a resolution which will set May 25 as the day the Egyptian population will vote to amend the constitution so as to provide for multi-candidate presidential elections. The resolution was endorsed by a huge majority of parliament, though this is because it was proposed by Mubarak and his party dominates. The government is on a diplomatic trip to Washington right now, and they are big time trying to convince American politicians that Egypt is on the way to democracy, even broadcasting the parliamentary debate over the measure on television. At this point, Egypt is very…
Instapundit alerts us to a Babes of Cairo sighting, see it here.
Recently here on Publius Pundit we had a spirited discussion about democratic reform in Egypt, with me warning of the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood using elections as an opening to come to power and create an Islamist state, a Sunni equivalent of what we face in Iran right now. My initial post, Egypt: Democracy Enthusiasts’ Toughest Test?, drew a number of critical comments which you can read there. I responded with another post, Response to Comments – Democracy in Egypt, dealing with the issues raised. One of the points I made was that American democracy supporters had to be…
Thousands of Egyptian students have demonstrated against the government in what is being called the largest protest in Egypt to date. The students – mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood movement – marched at five campuses in Cairo and the Nile Delta. Hundreds of police prevented them from taking their protests outside university gates onto the streets. Islamists, liberals and nationalists want an end to Egypt’s 24-year-old state of emergency. They also called for an end to the presidency of Hosni Mubarak. Mr Mubarak has been the country’s leader since 1981. He is hoping to win a fifth term in office…
Defying a ban against unauthorized rallies, several hundred people took to the street. Hundreds of supporters of one of Egypt??????s largest opposition groups have defied a government ban against unauthorized protests and taken to the streets of Cairo to demonstrate. Ahead of landmark elections, dozens of Muslim Brotherhood officials chanted that President Hosni Mubarak was no longer fit to rule Egypt. Many demonstrators were detained and remanded in custody for 15 days on charges including “membership of a banned organization, participation in illegal demonstrations and incitement to hatred of the regime,” judicial officials said. Pro-Islamic students at universities in Cairo,…
My post yesterday questioning whether opening elections to the Muslim Brotherhood might bring about disaster got more responses than any other post I have done on Publius Pundit. I felt that some of the issues raised by the comments had sufficient significance for democratic development theory to justify a full post response. (To read my initial post and the comments, see Egypt: Democracy Enthusiasts’ Toughest Test?) There were some responses with which I agree or at least find reasonable: (1) It is almost certainly true that were the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power in Egypt, this would lead to…
Those in the United States and elsewhere who are pushing hard for the spread of democracy around the globe (including Publius Pundit) may soon get their toughest test yet. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak recently made a much publicized announcement that the constitution was to be amended to allow for genuinely competitive presidential elections. Today the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt but is nevertheless highly organized and motivated, held protests demanding that they be given a chance to run in an open election. Dozens were arrested, and judging from what I saw on Al-Jazeera today the demonstrations were pretty…
Arthur Chrenkoff has a special roundup of recent events in the Middle East that he has dubbed the “Pro-Democracy Edition.” And in that respect, you should definitely check it out. For an older post in this same regards, check here if you haven’t seen it already.
The fourth straight week after Friday prayer? Interesting. Hundreds of men and women shouted slogans against the Egyptian government and clashed with security forces Friday in a protest against the mass detention and alleged torture of relatives suspected in last year’s Sinai resort bombings. Some 500 protesters demonstrated after Friday prayers outside the al-Rifai mosque, one of the main mosques in the north Sinai town of El-Arish, shouting, “Freedom, freedom.” A large force of riot police surrounded the protest and dispersed the men, beating some with electric prods and batons. Ten men were detained, police officials said. The men dispersed,…
This is certainly a positive development. CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt on Saturday released on bail Ayman Nour, an opposition leader detained since the end of January and whose jailing aroused Washington’s concern. Scores of people, waving orange Ghad (Tomorrow) party flags, cheered Nour as he left a Cairo detention center after supporters paid his bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,724). Nour, leader of the opposition Ghad party, was held for about six weeks during investigations into allegations that his party forged documents when it applied for recognition last year. The party says the allegations are fabrications. “He came out much…