Seeing potential in Egypt

Editorial

Events in Egypt are so fluid and unpredictable that it is hard to know what to make of it. The Egyptian people demanded the removal of President Mohammed Morsi, and the Egyptian army obliged. Morsi was the democratically elected president – the street rallies that led to his ouster marked the first anniversary of his election – but he was also an Islamist, emerging from the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Exporting” democracy to the Middle East has proved a challenge, put mildly. When the Arab Spring revolution ousted Hosni Mubarak, the people used their democratic rights to elect an Islamist government. This left Western powers – and Israel – in a bit of a quandary. So, the idea that Egyptians would rise up and demand democracy seems like a dream come true.

After Mubarak was overthrown, the army ran the country for a year and a half. Almost as soon as Morsi was overthrown, the army promised an interim government of technocrats, followed by new elections. Morsi and other members of the Muslim Brotherhood are under arrest. Chances are the Islamists won’t win the next election. But who will? And what if the Islamists don’t accept the results? The Muslim Brotherhood won last year’s election fair and square, but they were rejected by popular uprising and an army coup. This would seem to leave the Islamists with the lesson that the only system that will ever work for them is force, which is a very dangerous possibility.

The worst-case scenario, as far as we can see, is an ongoing civil war between the ousted Islamists and the Egyptian army. This is by no means a stretch of the imagination, given the tenacity of Islamist organizations throughout the region and their willingness to fight to the death.

But there is a far better possibility to imagine. (If the leaders of every country in the world, with all their advisors, cannot predict which way Egypt is headed, we certainly can’t. Still, we can dream.)

Egypt is the largest, most populous country in the region, and is seen as a bellwether among Arab states. Imagine if, instead of rushing into new elections to select a new strongman president, Egyptians, with the assistance perhaps of nonpartisan NGOs from around the world, put in place an infrastructure that assured not only democracy but a constitutionally protected multiparty parliamentary system with checks and balances on an elected president, a trustworthy judiciary enforcing broad-based constitutional rights and assurances of protection of minorities.

For Israel, this scenario would be ideal. If Egypt were to become as stable a democracy as Israel, the region could see upheavals of the most progressive sort, with numerous Arab Spring countries demanding similar institutionalized freedoms.

Democracies, it is noted, do not go to war with one another and so, leaving aside all the other ideological components, a democratic Egypt and a democratic Israel would encourage greater cooperation and peace than the region has ever seen. Moreover, a genuinely inclusive pluralistic governing society in Egypt would protect minorities and demonstrate to Egyptians that respect for all, regardless of race or religion, is a transcendent human value. If, parallel to these political changes, the Egyptian economy began to experience the growth that comes from stability and good leadership, Egypt could truly become the model for a new Middle East. The potential is enormous, not just for Egypt, but for the world.

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