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Political Rights and Demands for Reform

The significance of this election lies not in the possibility of unseating President Mubarak but in the fact that for the first time many Egyptians are boldly challenging his rule. It remains to be seen whether the motions of a contested election will deflect or amplify that challenge, which has raised demands for key political rights such as freedom of assembly and freedom of association. The key demand is to end the emergency law that has been in effect continuously since October 1981 and allows the authorities to ban demonstrations and public assemblies, detain individuals without charge for extended periods, and prosecute people before Emergency State Security Courts that do not meet international fair trial standards. The government has not suspended the emergency laws during the campaign, although it has generally not interfered with opposition rallies linked directly to the campaign.

Calls for reform coming from Western allies, especially the United States, contributed to Mubarak’s about-face on the issue of contested elections. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the Bush administration has emphasized the need for democratic reforms in the Arab world as one element in combating terrorism, and Washington has increasingly justified the invasion and occupation of Iraq in terms of advancing democratic rights in the region. President Bush prodded Egypt in his January 2005 State of the Union Address, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abruptly cancelled a planned February visit to protest the jailing of Ayman Nur. When Rice did visit Cairo in June, she publicly urged the government to allow opposition groups freedom of assembly and access to the media, and repeated President Bush’s call for international election monitors.

Washington contributed to Egypt’s present ferment in other, unintended ways. Large street demonstrations in 2003 protesting the Iraq invasion and Washington’s unstinting support for Israel’s suppression of the Palestinian intifada were the catalyst for initial outspoken attacks on President Mubarak’s authoritarian rule.

(Another key demand of demonstrators has been to end the widespread practice of torture by ordinary police and especially by the Ministry of Interior’s State Security Investigations bureau. Interestingly, on issues of torture and long-term detention without charge, where its own conduct stands as an affront to fundamental human rights, Washington has been deafeningly silent.)

The popular challenge that forced President Mubarak’s hand took organizational form in July 2004 when a coalition of individuals and groups, the Egyptian Movement for Change (al-haraka al-misriyya min ajl al-taghyir), initiated a petition campaign dismissing the latest cabinet shake-up as cosmetic, rejecting the apparent grooming of Mubarak’s son Gamal for presidential succession, and calling for direct, contested presidential elections.

The first public protest calling on Mubarak to step down occurred on December 12, 2004, when the Movement for Change brought between 500 and 1,000 persons to the steps of the High Court in Cairo. The largely silent protestors taped their mouths with large yellow stickers bearing the single word kifaya (enough), a slogan that quickly became the operative name of the protest movement. By the spring of 2005 Kifaya protests had become weekly events, with chants of “No to Mubarak, his party, and his son,” and “Mubarak, you failed us, what did you do with our money?”

Gamal Mubarak, who had been put in charge of “reforming” the NDP, insisted in July 2004 that ending the emergency law was “not among the priorities” of the NDP. It was “not wise to broach issues affecting domestic stability,” he said. Today, virtually all candidates, even President Mubarak, call for ending the emergency law, though the president says that the government will offer new counter-terrorism legislation – what he termed “a firm and a decisive law that eliminates terrorism and uproots its threats.”

Among Mubarak’s challengers, Ayman Nur says that in addition to getting rid of the emergency laws he would release the thousands of persons detained without charge –around 15,000 by most estimates – and do away with “unnecessary bodies like the state security prosecutor.” Al-Wafd’s Nu`man Gum`a has also called for the end of emergency law and release of detainees. Nur and a number of candidates favor drafting a new constitution; al-Wafd Party program is less explicit but calls for a “parliamentary republic” where the elected legislature “supervises the executive.”