spinning egypt

the spin is in.   the economic losses are being blamed on the youth protests rather than on the tyrant’s intransigence.  and the opposition is now engaged daw in negotiations with mubarak’s vp.   are the youth protesters represented in these talks?   some say yes, some say no.   but the impression being created is that there’s a consensus, mubarak stays to shepherd the transition and save egypt.   so it’s time for the protesters to go home, be patient, change is in the offing.   but it would seem that the protesters are digging in, too.   and smartly so.  they are not the problem, mubarak is.   to pack up and leave liberation square would be to play right back into the tyrant’s hands.

The Revolution Betrayed

Yuliya Tymoshenko

KYIV – From snowy Kyiv, I have watched the revolutions in Cairo and Tunis with joy and admiration. Egyptians and Tunisians are right to be proud of their desire to peacefully overthrow despotic governments. But, as someone who led a peaceful revolution, I hope that pride is tempered by pragmatism, because a change of regime is only the first step in establishing a democracy backed by the rule of law. Indeed, as my country, Ukraine, is now demonstrating, after revolutionary euphoria fades and normality returns, democratic revolutions can be betrayed and reversed.

The first of Ukraine’s lessons for Egyptian and Tunisian democrats is that elections do not a democracy make. After all, what if the enemies of freedom use elections to entrench their anti-democratic agendas? What if elements of the old regime, or the cadres of militant minorities, only pretend to embrace democratic norms in order to hijack the new democracy?

In Ukraine today, these are not abstract questions. Six years after our Orange Revolution, not only is my country’s democracy under threat, but the rule of law is being systematically perverted and our national independence bartered away. Indeed, the hybrid presidential/parliamentary system that Ukraine established as part of the settlement which brought a peaceful end to our revolution is being hollowed out in order to concentrate all political power in the hands of a supposedly democratically elected president.

Of course, Ukraine’s plight does not mean that the people of Egypt and Tunisia should spurn the call for free elections. Determining the will of the people does require expression through the ballot box. But elections alone cannot solve the fundamental political problems confronting Egypt and Tunisia. In particular, they cannot create a liberal order and open society.

To be effective, elections must be preceded by an extensive debate, in which political arguments are made, attacked, defended, and, ultimately, embodied in ideologically coherent party organizations. Democratic consent can truly be given only when voters know what they are consenting to. Whoever refuses to make a public case for what he or she intends to do when in power, or lies about it – as Ukraine’s current president, Viktor Yanukovich, did during his campaign against me last year – is no supporter of the democracy that citizens risked their lives to establish.

Moreover, democracy must be rooted in the rule of law. There must be accepted rules that are binding on everyone in politics, so that whoever does not accept or obey them is disqualified. Yanukovich’s naked attempt to hijack the election that precipitated the Orange Revolution should have caused him to be banned from running in future elections. Yet he was not.

Now, as president, Yanukovich’s crude instinct is to treat the law and constitution as Karl Marx thought of them: as a mixture of sentimentality, superstition, and the unconscious rationalization of private interests. Stealing elections, suppressing the vote, and behaving in contempt of the rule of law are negations of democracy. Those who engage in them must be seen as democracy’s enemies and treated as such.

A second lesson follows from this. The fact that a government has been democratically elected does not mean that the cause of freedom has prevailed. The rest of the world must not turn a blind eye to authoritarian backsliding. Yet today, not only are many of Ukraine’s neighbors silent about Yanukovich’s strangulation of Ukraine’s democracy, but some openly celebrate the supposed “stability” that his regime has imposed. For decades, Egyptians and Tunisians paid a high a price in freedom for the stability of others. They must never be asked, or forced, to pay it again.

One way to help prevent a democratic revolution from being betrayed from within is by building a genuine civil society. We in Ukraine learned this truth from harsh experience in the communist era. Although communism could, every now and then, coexist with private property, and sometimes with private enterprise, it could never coexist with civil society. The most fateful attack to accompany the installation of any dictatorship is an attack on civil society.

In Ukraine, freedom of speech was, on communism’s fall, restored overnight. But reviving civil society – the many mutually complementary ways in which citizens participate in public life – is a complicated task, as the peoples of Egypt and Tunisia will soon find out. The reason is self-evident: civil society is an intricate, fragile, even mysterious entity that evolves over decades, if not centuries. Its pillars – private, voluntary associations, decentralization of the state, and delegation of political power to independent bodies – must be nurtured patiently and from below.

Where civil society remains underdeveloped, every problem filters up to the “Big Man” squatting at the top. So the more power is concentrated at the center, the more it becomes possible for anti-democratic forces to gain – or regain – control over a country.

As the people around the world encourage the coming of democracy to Tunisia – and, one hopes, to Egypt – let us not be beguiled by its formal trappings. Let us celebrate the arrival in North Africa of the spirit of liberty and of solidarity, which brought Ukraine its liberty once and will do so again. And let us pledge that our solidarity does not end at the borders of our nations. Freedom – true freedom – is indivisible.

Yuliya Tymoshenko was Prime Minister of Ukraine and is now leader of the opposition.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org

mubarak’s good friday?

so mubarak has dug in.   insists that he is the legitimate ruler until september elections.   his supporters agree, afraid that if he goes life will get even more chaotic, not only for pro-mubarak egyptians, but for israel and america, because what if the muslim brotherhood takes over.

but that wasn’t very smart, siccing his armed goons on the protesting crowds, trying to disperse them?   incredibly the people are holding on and promise even bigger crowds today.   they’d rather have chaos without mubarak than with.  oo nga naman, kahit paano, it would be a step forward just getting rid of this aged tyrant.

not very smart either, blaming the uprising on foreign journalists and trying to muzzle foreign media, i suppose in anticipation of the march to the palace.   maybe they’ll block all roads to the palace?   or maybe the military forces might finally be forced to reveal whoseside they’re on, and whether it’s on the side of the people or of mubarak, they don’t want the world to see?   mas mahirap nga namang i-spin after, not just for mubarak but also for obama.

huge crowd packing liberation square right now.   the area reportedly being cordoned off by soldiers.   hopefully only to keep out pro-mubarak goons.   otherwise, time for obama to walk the talk, to put it mildly.

mubarak / marcos / endgame

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he will not run for a new term in office in September elections, but rejected demands that he step down immediately and leave the country, vowing to die on Egypt’s soil, in a television address Tuesday after a dramatic day in which a quarter-million protesters called on him to go.

Mubarak said he would serve out the rest of his term working to ensure a “peaceful transfer of power” and carry out amendments to rules on presidential elections.

in feb 86 marcos too was loathe to go.   until the very last minute marcos was trying to convince enrile to return to the fold.   the last phone call was feb 25 past 8 a.m.   enrile was getting ready to leave camp crame for cory’s inauguration in club filipino.   marcos suggested a provisional government that enrile would lead, but he marcos would stay on as honorary president.   huling hirit kumbaga.

President Obama, clearly frustrated by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s intention to retain his hold on power until elections later this year, said Tuesday evening that he has told Mubarak that a transition to representative government “must begin now.”

In brief remarks at the White House, Obama made no mention of Mubarak’s announcement that he had decided not to stand for reelection. Instead, Obama said he had told the Egyptian president in a telephone call that this was a “moment of transformation” in Egypt and that “the status quo is not sustainable.”

president reagan too was loathe to publicly and directly ask marcos to resign.   early in the morning of feb 24 he sent a private message that the marcoses would be welcome in the u.s.   also he gave instructions that marcos be “approached carefully” and “asked rather than told” to depart.   it was not until 7:30 in the evening that the white house finally “endorsed the provisional government of Mrs. Corazon Aquino, abandoning a 20-year ally in Mr. Marcos for the sake of a ‘peaceful transition’ in the Philippines.” . . . “Attempts to prolong the life of the present regime by violence are futile. A solution to this crisis can only be achieved through a peaceful transition to a new government.”

Angry demonstrators, fed up with Mubarak’s three-decade rule, jeered at the president’s remarks while watching his speech on TV in Tahrir Square on Tuesday night and chanted that he should go immediately.

Senior Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei, who has expressed readiness to lead the country’s popular uprising, has said that the people’s message is clear and they want Mubarak out now and not in September.

After Mubarak’s address, the protesters said that this Friday would be the “Friday of departure” for the president and announced that they would be gathering at his palace on Friday afternoon.

in feb 86 while the coryistas were still focused on shielding the edsa camps from marcos forces, leftist groups, acting on the false alarm that the marcoses were gone, had moved on to mendiola, only to find that the rumors were false.   but it was these militants who baited soldiers to fire warning shots, which freaked out the marcoses who thought that the edsa crowds were coming to attack the palace.  (the coryistas came too but only after cory’s inauguration.) and so they started making plans to move out and asked the americans for transpo to get to paoay.   but paoay’s airport had no lights so they had to make a stopover in clark that night.   which gave the new government time to consider the implications of allowing marcos to get to paoay.   in the end cory ordered that the marcoses be flown out of the philippines to prevent further civil unrest.

yes, a nonviolent seige on the pharaoh’s palace, it’s time.