Interview with Frank Stasio for the State of Things on NPR

About Egypt, the revolution, Libya, the Western aerial intervention, and much more.

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/Meet_Samia_Serageldin.mp3/view

Egypt's First Free Referendum: the High Price of Democracy

Yesterday saw Egypt’s first free referendum in sixty years, and the results come as a deep disappointment to the very revolutionary movement that made them possible- but that’s the price of democracy. Or rather, the price of democracy after sixty years of single-party dictatorship, during which the Nasser, Sadat, and most recently Mubarak regimes squashed all legitimate, secular opposition parties in favor of their own ruling NDP- leaving the only organized opposition to the underground, illegal, and religious movement: the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abolishment of the existing constitution, which gives such limitless power to the president, was one of the main demands of the January 25^th Revolution, and in response the army suspended the constitution. Yesterday, March 19^th, the Egyptian people were asked to vote for or against the re-instatement of an “amended” constitution, as opposed to scrapping this Mubarak-era document altogether and holding out for an entirely new constitution to be drawn up by a new, democratically elected body.

The proponents of democracy, represented by the various movements that had taken part in the revolution, as well as presidential candidates Mohamed Baradei and Amr Moussa- all lobbied for voting “No” to the amended constitution. Not only is the document deeply flawed, the democratic movements have not had the time to form parties, and the existing opposition parties, emasculated and hamstrung under Mubarak, have not had time to organize.

Only two parties lobbied for a “Yes” vote. Not surprisingly, they were the only two parties organized enough to take advantage of the early parliamentary elections that would follow upon adoption of the amended constitution: Mubarak’s NDP, shorn of its leadership but not of its country-wide privileges; and the Muslim Brotherhood, officially banned under Mubarak but highly organized and regularly fielding successful candidates as “independents.”

In the end, the “Yes” vote won. Put it down to fear-mongering about the instability inherent in continuing without a constitution; or to superior campaigning by the NDP and Muslim Brotherhood, particularly in the countryside, where voters vote for whom they know, rather than issues; or to exploitation of sectarian misunderstanding.

Whatever the reasons, the result is a heart-breaking lesson in democracy for the forces of democracy. And yet it should be a heart-warming one as well: 60% of the Egyptian population is estimated to have voted, waiting for as long as three hours in orderly lines- in a country where, for the past 60 years, election fraud was taken for granted and results favorable to the ruling party and president were a foregone conclusion. And the losers in this round of voting are accepting the results and promising to work with them, and try harder for the next round of elections. That is democracy. A beautiful thing to witness.

Last Day in Cairo

My last day in Cairo, there was an attempted coup d'etat, apparently, by Mubarak's Republican Guard. The four top men under the reviled former Minister of the Interior were arrested on charges of ordering the murderous horse-and-camel attack on peaceful demonstrators in Tahrir on the day that came to be known as "the battle of the camel". Various business tycoons/former ministers had their assets frozen; some were in jail.
Meantime, I was trying to find one of the crescent/cross pendants I'd seen worn as a symbol of Muslim/Christian solidarity. I tried several shops on my island neighborhood of Zamalek; many of them were closed, unusually, and there seemed to be unusual tension among the soldiers guarding the various embassies, particularly the Libyan on the next block. Following up on a tip, I went looking for the elusive pendant in a hole-in-wall shop down a tiny winding alley known only to a few Zamalek residents. It was eerily deserted, and I jumped when I heard a voice behind me; but it was only Ayman, a young carpenter who has done work for me. "Did you come looking for me?" he asked. When I explained my errand, he told me all the shops were closed.
The next day, on the long trip home to N. Carolina, you are met everywhere by references to the new Egypt. Boarding yet another flight in Paris, the security agent at the gate asks if I had been in Egypt for the events, and adds "shukran", (thank you in Arabic) as he hands me back my passport. The passport control agent at Atlanta remarks, "it must have been pretty hot in Cairo there for a while, but things have calmed down, haven't they."
I find a stack of magazines among the humongous pile of mail on my kitchen table at home, and as I flip through a Glamour magazine, I see that Egyptian women demonstrators have made it on the list of year's most glamorous under the heading: brave glamour.
But the threads of N. Carolina life must be picked up. I find a voice mail requesting a pre-interview phone call for Frank Stasio's radio program. And this morning, jet lag or no, I have to go to Duke to meet a French author whose visit I helped organize for Alliance francaise.
And the elusive pendant? I wasn't able to buy one before I left, but a friend who knew I was looking for it immediately insisted I take hers, and dropped it off for me before I left Cairo. That's Egyptians for you.

Revolution, Counter-revolution, and What I Wore.

The thing about revolutions these days, is that the exponentially accelerated, dizzying pace of change means that the stages through which, say, the French Revolution passed, are now compressed into days instead of months or years. It’s hard to tell what stage you’re in at any given moment. In Egypt today, the news comes fast and furious. During a two-hour panel discussion held at Shorouk Bookstore yesterday evening, the discussion was partly shaped by the tweets popping up on the speakers’ cell phones. The two floors of the bookstore were packed with about a hundred people, mostly young, come to take a crash course in Democracy 101 from author/activists who had been writing against the Mubarak autocracy.

Meanwhile, their peers outside the hall, on the university campuses in and around Cairo, were practicing their own version of “democracy”: an instant “off with their (figurative) heads” applied to university deans, dons, and anyone with ties to the former ruling NDP party. As the tweets came in, the speakers on the panel, from the vantage of their 30-40 years, warned against unreasonable demands, unrealistic expectations, and narrow interest group claims that, unchecked, could effectively overload and crash-burn the revolution before it properly got off the ground. They warned against a failed state.

As even more worrying tweets came in, about clashes between Copts and Muslims in the Mokkattam hills, about harassment of women protesters on a women’s march, the speakers warned against counter-revolution. The extremists elements in both religious communities had never signed on to the revolution or its spirit of religious and gender inclusion, and now took advantage of the  

security vacuum to create havoc. But an even more insidious threat of counter-revolution comes from the million-plus members of Mubarak’s NDP party, about to be disenfranchised, and his million-plus security and police services, taken off the streets and sent home in disgrace; both have every incentive to create as much instability and insecurity as possible, in order to stage a return to power.

But it isn’t only sinister forces who are expressing doubts about change these days. The Mubarak regime, and before him Sadat’s, had made the NDP the only patronage game in town for forty years; anyone who had business or political dealings had no choice but to deal with the establishment, and suffers accordingly today.

In addition, women in particular have concerns about security; my women friends exchange recipes for home-made pepper spray and carry it in atomizers in their purses, although none of them has actually faced a threatening situation. People still go out to lunches and dinners in restaurants- now sparsely frequented- but the women wear costume jewelry only; dress down; and forsake their large handbags for small pocketbooks. But Cairo is safe, everyone agrees, the incidents reported all take place outside of the city.  

Give the new prime minister and his cabinet time, the speakers plead. “Two months,” one girl kneeling on the floor with her backpack calls out. But two years seems to be the time frame most people expect it will take for things to calm down and shake out. Even the panel speakers at the bookstore seem to favor that timeline. But everything else is the subject of heated debate: parliamentary elections before or after the constitutional amendment? (As of now, the referendum on a new constitution is set for March 19.) What about presidential candidates? Our speakers label Amr Moussa, Arab League head, as “the candidate for those who want continuity with a changed face,” but my informal poll of taxi drivers and hair dressers brings up his name every time. The role of the military? It should lead to a handover to civilians as soon as possible, everyone agrees. But take them at their word, give them a chance, don’t withdraw your confidence in them just yet, the speakers warn.

In the end, speaker Mustafa Higgazi, elegant and aloof in his effect, made an impassioned plea in his unimpassioned manner: approach every situation, every problem, from this stand, he exhorted: “I am a free Egyptian human being.” If that is your posture, he affirmed, you will include all Egyptians, regardless of creed or class, as your brethren; you will include all humanity. You will make your decisions as a free man or woman, nor longer subject but citizen.

Before we broke up, someone warned that she had just received a tweet about disruption on the 6^th October flyover, the main artery of central Cairo; it was blocked, and everyone would have to find an alternate route home before curfew.

  

How Friedman Got it Wrong on Egypt's Revolution

Tom Friedman claimed, in a recent editorial, that the young Egyptians, Tunisians and other Arabs in revolt were inspired by democracies in the US, China, and Israel, among other countries. That conclusion would find few supporters on the ground inside Arab societies. In the case of Egypt, young people had their own history of home-grown democracy to look up to: in the thirties, forties and up to the military coup of 1952 that became known as the July 23^rd Revolution, Egypt had a secular, multi-party, parliamentary democracy with fiercely contested elections and intense popular engagement in the political process. A wildly popular television docudrama, “King Farouk”, riveted viewers in Egypt and the Arab world to their sets three years ago. The runaway success of this dramatization of Egyptian party politics in the 1930’s and 1940’s introduced entire generations to a history that the Nasser regime, and its successors, had tried hard to suppress.

Young people under forty watched, incredulous, as freely elected Egyptian Prime Ministers pre-1952 demanded accountability from King Farouk himself over his expenses, and contrasted that with the unaccountability of their current billionaire Pharaohs. As in the British system, the winning party’s leader was appointed prime minister and formed a cabinet from his party; the Wafd Party, with which my family’s history is associated, was by far the popular favorite. Egypt’s democracy was qualified by the power of the King and the influence- official or unofficial- of the British, and there was some corruption in the electoral system, but it was a very real democracy nevertheless. The miniseries “Farouk” opened the eyes of the post-1952 generations to their parents’ and grandparents’ legacy not only of democracy, but also of passionate patriotism, of a reverence for the very word “Egypt.” The revelation of their suppressed history created a sense of loss, a powerful nostalgia for that belonging, that legacy.

Almost exactly a year before the January 25^th revolt, there was a first inkling, a first expression of this diffuse longing to rally around the flag: when Egypt won Africa’s Football (Soccer) Cup, the outburst of national pride, the flag-waving, was out of all proportion to the catalyst. The Mubarak regime sensed the inchoate passion, and thought to co-opt it by putting Gamal Mubarak and his brother Alaa front and center in the football stadiums. This gesture backfired; it only proved that the aloof Gamal Mubarak seemed congenitally incapable of connecting with the crowd.

A few months later, the Tunisian example was all that repressed young Egyptians needed to mobilize and claim their country, their flag, their own history, their own legacy of democracy.

Tahrir Square: Days of Elation and Doubt

Tahrir Square: Days of Elation and Doubt

Who would in their wildest dreams have imagined that an Egyptian Prime Minister would have to tender his resignation as a result of condescending comments he made during a televised debate, in which he essentially apologized for not preventing the bloodshed by offering to send flowers and chocolates to the victims or their families? Faced with the indignant “he just doesn’t get it” reaction of the January 25^th generation, the PM resigned. The new man, Essam Sharif, demonstrated that he got it the very next day of his appointment by going down to Tahrir Square and addressing the protesters directly, promising them that the day he would not be able to fulfill their legitimate demands would be the day he would be in Tahrir himself protesting.

Curfew is now midnight to 6 am, so Cairenes are finding that they must change their routine to socialize over brunch and lunch rather than dinners that start at 10 pm and go on till whenever. The army enforces curfew strictly.

On the other hand, the police are still not patrolling the streets, and the army is not or cannot always be responsive to calls for intervention: incidents of abuse are multiplying, magnified by rumor. A school bus was held up by robbers- none of the children were hurt, but parents are now terrified. A bank manager was roughed up and forced to sign his resignation by the employees he had tried to terminate. And so on.

Many of the people who demonstrated or supported their children demonstrating, have much to lose in the new Egypt they helped bring about. Business people are losing money. People who had nothing to do with the greed and corruption of the Mubarak regime, indeed who suffered from it, find themselves likely to be tarred by the same brush. Many are victims of fraudulent claims to redress non-existent past wrongs: one victim is a woman whose country house sits on land she inherited from her grandfather; she found it overrun by the neighboring villagers who are building shacks on the grounds and claim that she took this land from them by force.

The alarmists are beginning to evoke the French revolutions, both 1789 and 1848. But most Egyptians are willing to set their doubts aside, for now, and trust in the bright new day, the brave new world.  

No passport control: Welcome to (the new) Egypt!

Returning to Egypt from India, on the last leg of the flight, Doha to Cairo, a husky man in his thirties gets up and goes through the plane, asking people to fill out landing cards and show him their passports. My reflex is one of Orwellian alarm. But this is the new Egypt: the man quickly checks passports, stamps visas, and returns the passports, keeping the landing cards. The purpose of the exercise is to streamline the process of passport control to the extent of doing away altogether with queuing up on the ground. Once our flight lands, passengers simply show their passports, open at the page with the freshly stamped visa, and are waved through to the baggage collection area. It's not clear if this will be regular procedure from now on, or just an experiment, but this creative spirit would have been unthinkable a month ago.
"Welcome to Egypt", earnest young men greet anyone who is taken for a foreigner, "welcome to Egypt." Two adorable little girls waiting for their luggage to arrive on the carousel are wearing Egyptian flags as shawls.
It is a little more crowded than usual at this terminal, the limousine driver who picks us up tells us, because all international flights have been diverted to it, in order to dedicate the other international terminal to the evacuation flights coming in from Libya, both military and civilian charters, carrying Egyptian expatriate workers away from the violent upheavals in Libya. Ironic to think that only a couple of weeks ago it was Egypt that foreigners were evacuating from in a panic.
Today all is calm in Cairo. But police presence is still light in the streets. There is a feeling of restlessness. A few incidents are reported, of clashes between civilians flexing their new "freedom" muscles and police reacting with their old reflexes of intimidation. No one is happy with the Mubarak old guard who have been re-assigned in the new cabinet, but there is a dearth of experienced candidates to fill ministerial positions, let alone presidential candidates...such is the legacy of sixty years of essentially single-party rule. Emergency laws are still in place, as is curfew, from midnight to 6 am; but now it is actually enforced, by the army.

Budha, Tata, and farewells....

Yesterday morning, a long drive to visit to the Budhist museum and Saranatha, where the Budha is supposed to have been born and preached, and where the relics in the museum were found. The big central tower glitters under the fierce sunshine: Asian pilgrims bring gold leaf and paste it on the sides of the tower. Everything in Budhism is symbolic: saffron is the color of wisdom, orange the color of detachment- although, as David, the bon-vivant New Yorker (who asks me, when I mention my blog, if I describe him as Rabelaisian) remarks: "I can't imagine  meditating in an orange room- it's the least restful color."
Back to Varanasi for the farewell dinner: we all meet in the lobby and exclaim over each other's finery; it's like high school prom night. The men are in coat and tie, and some of the men, including David and Rick (our UNC tour director), wear rings they bought in Jaipur. The women are wearing the jewellery they bought in India and one of the many shawls we have all bought on this trip. We have an elegan,t seated dinner with Indian wine- which is surprisingly potent given its wateriness. Their are toasts and speeches: Linda reads a poem she made up, about our trip, and somehow finds a word that rhymes with "namaste." Linda and her husband Dick, and two other couples, are going on to the Nepal extension of the trip, so are leaving the group tomorrow morning. The rest of us are going on to Delhi, then everyone goes on to the States except for me and my husband- we are going back to Cairo. We all talk of a reunion in Chapel Hill in a month or two, to which not only the North Carolina crowd but the Philadelphians and the New York area members of the group are invited to come as well.
Our last morning in Varanasi, I take a last walk in the garden. Almost all the hotels we have stayed in India are Taj or Gateway, all Tata group properties- Tata is also automobiles, construction, an immense corportation. But they seem to treat their hotel employees well. I was looking for what Indians call an "active studio" (gym) on the grounds, and stumbled onto one that I thought was for the guests till I saw the signs reminding staff- for whom the gym is intended- that when answering the phone, they should not hang up before the guest does even after saying goodbye. When I do find the gym intended for guests, there is someone using the treadmill, so I tell the gym staffer that I will walk around the garden instead. He actually goes looking for me ten minutes later to let me know the machine is available.
But I am finding it much pleasanter walking in thegarden among the beds of dinner-plate size dahlias- the biggest any of us have ever seen, in all colors and striations imaginable. The secret to their lushness seems to be the treated sewage water with which they are irrigated- the smell is quite unpleasant, but the dahlias are splendid, and there is a peacock pacing on the green lawn. There are several trees with big reddish lily-shaped blooms, trees I have also seen in Egypt, and I ask one of the gardeners what they are. He tells me they are  cotton- not the kind used for textile, but another kind used for pillow stuffing. Cotton trees, who would've guessed!
Penultimate bus ride to Varanasi airport, very fine and modern, for the penultimate flight, to Delhi. Kingfisher airlines, Indian-owned, serves us lunch although the flight is only an hour plus. Arriving in Delhi, we take a completely different route from the airport- this hotel is at the other end of town- and we see only wide modern highways and new construction- until we catch sight of three elephants with painted heads striding single file along one of the service roads. Only in India!
Our last hotel, in this new part of Delhi, is very grand and very modern, and Sylvia complains  in her gravelly East Coast voice that it could be anywhere, including Florida. She is disappointed that we didn't get "lei'd" or offered mango juice or wished "namaste." This is New Dehli. The New India. There is trouble brewing, according to the news, and food security measures announced. Demonstrations, inspired by Egypt, they say. Well, we are heading back to Egypt, where it all started over a month ago, to see what change has wrought in the week we've been gone. I can't wait!