Democracy in the Third World: Egypt's High-Risk Experiment

...But that does not appear to be the major, or even an important, reason for these public displays...

...What are the prospects for continuing or even accelerating the slow progress toward democracy...

...But if such shrewd observers as the Wall Street Journal's Karen Elliot House and Peter R. Kann are accurate in their judgment of Mubarak, it is inconceivable that so tough and knowledgeable a leader would have allowed himself to be duped and indeed traduced by his subordinates on a matter of central importance to his plans for Egypt...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985...

...President Mubarak's National Democratic party won something like 75 percent of the popular vote and 87 percent of the parliamentary seats...

...In addition there is the rightist New Wafd party, which is certainly hostile to the Mubarak government and to much of the system that has evolved since the 1952 revolution...

...The downtown Harvard Club gave Jonathan an outraged but pleasantly giddy sensation, like the one he got whenever he went into the Yard's Memorial Church and gazed at all the Spauldings gleaming foursquare and golden on the polished granite wall...

...Rifaat el-Mahgoub, in private life one of Egypt's most distinguished and influential economists--talk of the overriding need to strike a balance between social and economic imperatives...

...He surveyed the twenty freshmen wedged into the ancient, bolted-down desks and chairs of Seaver Hall--all white except the two black girls in front--and hoped for her sake that the fatter, blacker girl would not answer to the name Dinah Jefferson...

...Given the chance, either would sweep it away, playing Khomeini to the Shah or Lenin to Kerensky...

...In most cases, though, the ruler and the regime are indistinguishable, the ruler having no discernible aspirations for the system beyond his own lifetime and perhaps that of his immediate family...

...Unemployment is running at about 10 percent, but the more insidious problem is underemployment, which may be as high as 30 percent...

...The practical implications of this reasonable enough desire all point in the direction of sharp increases in exports--raw materials and manufactured goods--but it is not at all clear how this is to be done...

...Unlike his predecessor, Anwar el-Sadat, whose sense of personal identification with the nation bordered on egomania, Mubarak sees himself and his role with an exemplary unillusioned toughmindedness...

...Forget about symbolism...

...Whatever the ordinary peasants and workers may think of the present regime (in the absence of reliable opinion surveys that's anybody's guess), no one doubts the existence of powerful forces that are deeply inimical to it and are waiting to seize any opportunity to bring it down...

...Israel's very existence would soon be placed in the direst jeopardy, and the United States would then have to choose between direct military intervention to save it--with all the fearful danger of armed confrontation with the Soviet Union--and allowing it to be destroyed--along with our entire position and prestige in the region...

...el-Said whether Egypt oughtn't to place more urgent emphasis on increasing its food production, he snapped back, "We want to become self-reliant, not selfsufficient...

...In this light, the impatience of Western economists and diplomats with Cairo's reluctance to "set its economic house in order" is badly misplaced...

...Someone else brought up the paradox of darkness within enlightenment, and the semester was off and running...

...And President Mubarak and his lieutenants must continue to use every available art and stratagem to educate the Egyptian people in the democratic values the leaders themselves undoubtedly hold...

...Jonathan's only regret was Dinah Jefferson...

...In her short hair she wore little barrettes, which didn't seem to serve any purpose except to add more plastic to her brightly colored plastic earrings, and the drugstore-stylish plastic eyeglass frames over which her brows arched as she gazed at him with those astonished eyes, in this and subsequent classes...

...But that is clearly not the case in Egypt...

...Even the leader of the opposition bloc in parliament, Mumtaz Nassar, told the Washington Post that the corruption in last May's balloting was perpetrated by thenprime minister Fuad Mohieddin, among other government officials, without Mubarak's knowledge or consent...

...The vote must be secret and the physical act of getting to the polling station free of intimidation...

...It won't, tO put it mildly, be easy...

...While the world's Egypt-watchers focus most of their attention on its international relations, the greatest threat to its stability is not international but economic...

...And this in turn was a consequence of the deeper malaise of Egyptian politics: the absence among the masses of any serious emotional commitment to the present constitutional order...

...Look," he went on, not relenting...

...On the other hand, as David Ottaway pointed out in his series of Washington Post articles this past January, the government in preparing to reduce subsidies "is proceeding gradually and by stealth" wherever possible, avoiding large pronouncements, nibbling away at the foundations of the subsidy system rather than dynamiting it all at once...

...The students had been told to read Heart of Darkness, so rather than waste the first session, Jonathan plunged right in...

...That consensus will have a chance to develop only if two conditions are met: Economic improvement must be marked enough to undercut the anti-democratic opposition's appeal for a revolutionary "solution" to the nation's problems...

...The other one, slender and coppery with fashionably frizzled hair, answered to Felicity St...

...These had been touted as the freest in Egypt's history and may actually have been so...

...The Egyptians themselves, at least the government officials and university professors I talked to at some length last November, see the situation as rather more complex...

...Stop using those big abstractions...

...el-Said considers his two largest tasks to be a reduction of inflationary pressures and an increase in exports...

...There really is no alternative...

...Economics Minister Dr...

...Nor does one hear a persuasive case being made by officials as to which other commodities for export will take up the slack in oil revenues...

...The white man in Africa, acting like he's God...

...her face was broadly heart-shaped, with a dignified nose and mouth, and eyes that were almost beautiful, astonishedlooking...

...From behind the tasseled menu, Jonathan's father made no reply except to recommend the cold poached salmon...

...It was a source of pride, this ability to engage Martha Bayles is TV critic for the Wall Street Journal and has recently completed a novel about basing, Boston Common...

...For another, President Sadat had not yet concluded his peace treaty with Israel, destroying Egypt's preeminence in the Arab world and burdening its opinion leaders with a heavy sense of guilt and alienation...

...the fantastic while executing the mundane...

...Imports, especially of basic foods, have been rising much more swiftly than exports...

...The Wafd, in rather cynical alliance with the fundamentalist Moslem Brotherhood, was able to wage an almost wholly unfettered campaign...

...But it is inconceivable that we could provide enough additional aid to serve as a cure, rather than merely a palliative, for its present economic woes...

...but, unlike the other two forces, it enjoys legal sanction as a political party and managed to win 58 of the 448 elected seats in last May's parliamentary elections...

...Compensating, at least in part, for these systemic weaknesses is President Mubarak's own determination to nurture a genuinely democratic order...

...O.K...

...Both will be fearfully difficult to achieve, but neither is impossible...

...The revolution that Egypt's government may avoid this year will come another year, as inevitably as the flooding of the Nile, if the economy collapses under the weight of trade deficits and foreign debt and is no longer able to buy the food to feed its people...

...For another, the stakes are simply too high to do otherwise: For better or worse, our security interests in the Middle East are inextricably tied to those of Egypt and Israel and the collapse or destruction of either would be a far greater disaster than the loss of Vietnam...

...That at any rate is the claim made by his close associates...

...Karl O'Lessker DEMOCRACY IN THE THIRD WORLD: EGYPT'S HIGH-RISK EXPERIMENT We have no choice but to be patient--and generous...

...In a 1982 study for the U.S...

...Through the ivy crawling across the screen of the open window, Jonathan could see the venerable maples and beeches of Harvard Yard standing massively still, their September foliage as dark as cooked spinach...

...The reason, of course, is not the sort of political cowardice we see in the West among politicians who have to face the electorate at regular intervals...

...This guy Kurtz is in a bad way, we can all see that...

...And this, finally, is the key element in Egypt's slow and painful progress toward democracy...

...Because overstaffing was used to combat unemployment, a substantial number of public sector workers were also underemployed...

...What then can the U.S...

...Civilization,' 'barbarism'--what do these words mean...

...Not that the two are wholly separable: Peace with Israel cost Egypt dearly in terms of investment and aid from other Arab nations, an amount only partially offset by increased aid from the U.S...

...But far more than their critics they are aware of the political risks they must run in pursuit of economic rationality...

...Treat a breakthrough like a breakthrough too fast, and you lose the ones who haven't seen it yet...

...Another great imponderable is how the army would respond to widespread civil unrest...

...One obvious handicap is the world oil glut and consequent fall in prices...

...he exclaimed, enjoying the dismay of the preppier English majors...

...Such unparalleled generosity cost the Treasury about $7 billion last year--out of a total budget of only $22 billion...

...Just try thinking about it in human terms, as though he were somebody you know...

...Harvard Club a few stories higher, so we could look down on everything-including those quaint little brick buildings across the river...

...All authoritarian leaders recognize this, of course, especially in the new nations of the world, where exalting the leader is a major function of government...

...Jonathan didn't blink...

...More importantly, as we have seen elsewhere in the world, aid can too easily become an excuse for delaying the hard decisions essential to the solution of deep-rooted problems...

...But Mr...

...Her silence was perfect: a work of art...

...Clearly economic aid is the prime requisite and we have already given Egypt a substantial amount--S10 billion since 1975, $2.2 billion during the present fiscal year alone...

...Last May's parliamentary elections provide some evidence...

...It doesn't take much to imagine what the Middle East would look like were Egypt to become a radical fundamentalist state on the Iranian model or a radical leftist one on the Syrian or Iraqi model...

...Having invested so much of our vital national interests in the survival of Israel, we now have as great an interest in the survival of a moderate regime in Egypt...

...in a popularity contest, not even an electoral one, and they are neither stupid nor unschooled...

...This assessment is shared by the Economist of London, which argued in an ~editorial shortly after the election that "Mr...

...Too often these family meetings, which were supposed to be held on neutral territory, ended up being held in places just like home, with one or two grandfather clocks, a dozen Oriental carpets, and a dishearteningly loyal minion at a mahogany desk keeping out people who, through no fault of their own, didn't happen to belong...

...aid would make sense...

...Its dismal showing at the polls had a lot more to do with voter apathy --the conviction that the outcome was a foregone conclusion--than with the government's strongarm tactics...

...Mustafa el-Said cited this "inability to optimize the use of Egypt's manpower" as the greatest THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985 obstacle his nation's economy faces...

...Fuad Serageddin, the leader of the major opposition party, the right-of-center New Wafd, called the elections "pure theatre.., the least free for the past 60 years...

...In Egypt's case, however, a favorable response to President Mubarak's latest request for increased U.S...

...Other problems include a current inflation rate of about 30 percent, a trade deficit equivalent to 12 percent of gross domestic product, the sharply rising cost of food subsidies (up 22 percent this year over 1983), and a shocking 29 percent increase in the volume of foreign debt (to $15.1 billion) in the last two years...

...So it was that when modest price increases were put into effect last fall, a few scattered protest demonstrations were all it took to get the government to retreat...

...Doubtless Hosni Mubarak, like anybody in politics anywhere, enjoys the psychological perks of highest office--the adulation of the masses, the lavish praise of his associates in government...

...Aren't they the clearest possible sign of a developing "cult of personality," the very antithesis of any authentic move toward democracy...

...Jonathan noticed all these details because there was nothing else to go on...

...He waited, and eventually some bright Jewish kid raised his hand, relating Felicity's comment to the metaphor of light versus darkness, and apologizing wittily for reintroducing symbolism...

...Too bad they couldn't put the which the election was held, concluding that "it is no surprise that, after the years of repression since Nasser's revolution, Egypt has yet to acquire the cement of national consensus...

...Waiting in the wings to capitalize on any serious disturbances that may erupt are two major opposition forces, the Moslem fundamentalists and a shadowy coalition of leftists, both operating essentially outside the constitutional order...

...Still groggy from his own country's presidential campaign, an American visitor to Egypt these days might be excused for thinking he had stumbled into another: President Hosni Mubarak's pictures are everywhere--on lamp posts, billboards, construction sites, kiosks, and of course all public buildings...

...Mubarak and his lieutenants are not competing regime's survival than were those in 1977...

...A loaf of bread still costs only a penny and, as foreign observers never fail to point out, farmers feed it to their livestock because it's cheaper than grain...

...The trade deficit, however, presents a more intractable problem...

...He has recently been appointed senior research fellow at the Hudson Institute...

...At last...

...Just as clearly, his highest ambition is to leave a stable constitutional--and more democratic--regime behind him when he steps down from the presidency in (he now thinks) 1993...

...If the public can be induced to accept small changes phased in a few at a time, the likelihood of insurrection will lessen and the economy will be in a position to grow fast enough, relative to both population and imports, to make a difference...

...Little wonder, then, that Dr...

...and its allies would be well advised to do all in their power to help bring them about...

...it is concern for the very survival of Egypt's political system...

...She was not homely...

...It would be difficult for Mubarak to have much confidence in the army should there be a full-scale fundamentalist-led uprising in the wake of urban disorders this year...

...He clearly regards himself as the best man to lead Egypt through immensely difficult times...

...Add to that the accurate perception of risk, of contingency--any day Egypt's present system could collapse in a hail of gunfire or under the hammer blows of economic catastrophe--and our inclination is simply to write the country off as anything deserving the name of democracy...

...while the major opposition parties, too weak to have any immediate prospect of forming a government, continue to be tempted by extremism...

...As to the former, government policies have apparently enjoyed some success in the past several years: As recently as 1981-82 the inflation rate was 44 percent...

...Pierre...

...Its population of 48 million is growing at the rate of almost 1.3 million a year--2.7 percent, or more than a third higher than the world rate--and 37 percent of the people live below the poverty level...

...The fundamentalist and leftist opposition, by contrast, scarcely bother to conceal their mortal enmity toward the existing order...

...For one thing, the Shah was still firmly in power eight years ago and the Mullahs of Iran offered no glittering example for Egypt's fundamentalists to follow...

...Felicity was looking straight at him, ignoring the others...

...Mubarak isn't running for re-election...

...Rather, they seem to be an attempt to inculcate and nurture in the Egyptian people an emotional attachment to the regime largely missing since the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, and in Egypt, as in all but a very few nations in the world today, attachment to a regime must begin with the regime personified--not with an abstract constitutional order...

...The U.S...

...This blow to its export earnings is made doubly painful by Egypt's own continuing growth in oil usage at heavily subsidized prices (a gallon of gasoline still costs only about 45 cents...

...Mubarak scored quite well" on the following test: "The run-up to the poll must be free enough for any person or party to express a view and actively to solicit support...

...We tend to see it as an either/or proposition: A political system is either democratic or it isn't, according to certain well-defined criteria, and don't try to fool us with hypocritical rhetoric and phony plebiscites, thank you very much...

...Westerners often find it hard to grasp not only how risky but how ambiguous a business democracy is for most Third World countries...

...Indeed, they argue, the important question is not whether Egypt is a democracy but whether it will have any chance to become the sort that even the most culture-bound Westerner will accept...

...do to maximize that regime's chances to survive...

...The editorial went on to take account of other legitimate reservations about the climate of opinion in Martha Bayles THE LIFE OF THE MIND A Harvard story...

...Expecting all the black folks to worship at his feet...

...he's "running" for the very survival of Egypt's high-risk experiment in democracy...

...They are just as cognizant as anyone in the World Bank, the IMF, or the State Department of the heavy economic costs they continue to incur because of current subsidy policies...

...And widespread riots in 1985 would be far more hazardous to the damentalist influence appears to be widespread throughout the rank-andfile and among elements of the officer corps...

...For one thing, since Camp David we have been virtually obligated to provide matching funds to both Egypt and Israel: What we give one we must give the other...

...said that the greatest danger to Egypt's fledgling democracy has been the government party's inability to develop the kind of deep roots in the populace that, say, India's Congress party enjoys...

...Department of the Army, Darrel Eglin noted that "in urban areas millions of people make a living as casual, unskilled laborers, as street vendors, part-time construction workers, or in other marginal activities...

...parliamentary democracy and their own hybrid version of the two, they nevertheless insist that Westerners ought to assess Egypt's system in dynamic and evolutionary terms rather than in the static, either/or terms we feel happier with...

...An entire vocabulary was drying up in their throats, and they had nothing to replace it with--except their own meagre allotment of heart and guts...

...In fact, however, the government's claim of free and fair elections is far closer to the truth...

...Assume, now, that Egypt somehow pulls it off--manages to rationalize its crazy-quilt relations between public and private sectors and creates a healthier balance between consumption and production...

...In plainer terms, the government, at least since the price riots of 1977, has been nearly paralyzed with fear of the political consequences of reducing subsidies...

...This makes little sense economically or strategically, but politically it is unavoidable...

...It was the first week of the semester, but hot enough to cook a tree--thought Jonathan, pleased as usual by the private play of his imagination while standing officially before a class...

...Yes, but what about Mubarak's pictures everywhere...

...But she did...

...Even worse from a budgeting perspective are the heavy subsidies of food the government continues to provide...

...In these circumstances the government's apparent determination to proceed this spring with major subsidy reductions on food and energy looks positively heroic...

...The only other explanation is that the voting irregularities were by no means as widespread and decisive as the opposition leaders claim...

...Among those I asked about it, none thought it likely that the Wafd would engage in armed insurrection against the regime in the event of 1977-style riots...

...But turnout was low and by all accounts the balloting was marked by fraud and intimidation, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985 especially in the countryside...

...Although President Mubarak appears to be well respected by the senior military and there is no evidence that the army has suffered any serious infiltration by leftists, funHaving invested so much of our vital national interests in the survival of Israel, we now have as great an interest in the survival of a moderate regime in Egypt...

...And yet, as several top officials told me last fall, there is also a serious labor shortage in the country--a shortage, of course, of skilled and semi-skilled workers, hundreds of thousands of whom have taken jobs in other Arab countries and without whose brain-and-muscle power Egypt's economic development plans must falter...

...and he did not have anything to say about these dully opulent rooms atop the new Shawmut Bank Building--at least not to Jonathan...

...When I asked Dr...

...The answer is almost certainly no...

...Recognizing the width of the gulf between a classic presidential or Karl O'Lessker is senior editor of this journal and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University...

...The United States should not minimize the seriousness of the situation...

...When asked how they can possibly justify this sort of profligacy, government leaders--for example, the Speaker of the People's Assembly, Dr...

...And this new approach just may work...

...So when a nation like Egypt holds moreor-less free elections under carefully controlled conditions with the semblance of a multiparty system and a reasonably free press, we really don't know quite what to make of it...

...For one thing, Cairo appears determined to go ahead with its high-risk but necessary economic reform measures, and the additional assistance we can provide will only increase its chances for success...

...They are not uncomfortable with terms like "limited" or "authoritarian" democracy...

...To me, it's about racism...

...Spaulding knew what to order, since he lunched here almost daily...

...Economics Minister el-Said put the point with candor and insight when he Jonathan could not believe her name was Dinah...