IF THE MOUNTAIN WON'T COME TO W, HE'LL MOVE THE MOUNTAIN:

New openings for Arab democracy: Mubarak's call for elections in Egypt follows moves in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestinian territory. (Nicholas Blanford and Gretchen Peters, 2/28/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

In a surprise announcement Saturday, Egypt's long-ruling president, Hosni Mubarak, ordered constitutional changes that would open the door for the first-ever multiparty presidential elections in the world's most populous Arab country. The move is the latest indication of a cautious democratic shift under way in the Arab world.

Since the beginning of the year, the region has seen national elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, landmark municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, and unprecedented mass demonstrations in Lebanon calling for an end to Syrian tutelage. [...]

[A]side from the situation here in Lebanon, where calls for democracy emerged spontaneously after the assassination of a former prime minister earlier this month, most of the recent shifts toward democracy have been top-down initiatives by regimes eager to appease Washington.

In his inauguration speech in January, President Bush said a cornerstone of his foreign policy in his second term would be to promote democracy, particularly in the Arab world. Last year, he unveiled an initiative designed to encourage Arab countries to embrace democracy. But the initiative met with a hostile reaction from most Arab countries who viewed it as interference in their domestic affairs.

Critics say that the elections in Saudi Arabia lack substance due to the limited power of municipal councils and the fact that women are barred from voting. The Saudi government argues that the pace of reform has to be measured carefully because of the deeply conservative nature of the kingdom.

Still, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal suggested over the weekend that women may be allowed to vote in future elections. "The commissioner of elections said after the elections for municipal councils that they went so well and testing the water proved so appealing that the commissioner is going to suggest to the government to have women vote in the next municipal elections," he told BBC television.

Despite Arab criticism of Washington's ambitions for democratizing the Arab world, some analysts say that the tentative reforms would not have happened without US intervention. "It's because of the Americans, let's face it," says Michael Young, a Lebanese political analyst. "These regimes didn't give a damn about the views of their people not so long ago - Mubarak's decision I link directly to Bush's inauguration address. The leaders realize things have to change in terms of the public image."

MORE:
Regional election fever catches up with Emirates (AFP, 2/26/05)

Academics and members of the appointed consultative council in the United Arab Emirates came out in favor of elections in the Persian Gulf state, arguing that it could not stay out of the regional trend toward elected bodies. [...]

[M]ember Mohammad bin Ali al-Nagbi told the same newspaper he would support elections as long as they were decided from within and were not imposed by external pressure. Atiq Daka, a professor of political science at the UAE University, told AFP: "Our country is now the only member of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) which has yet to catch up with the political opening up under way in the Arab world. Even countries we thought incapable of political change, such as Saudi Arabia, are now ahead of us."

The PGCC groups the UAE with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Bahrain and Kuwait have elected parliaments, while Oman has an elected advisory council.

And earlier this month, ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia kicked off unprecedented local polls in which half the members of 178 municipal councils will be elected across the kingdom. Women, however, have been excluded from the three-stage ballot.

"We are certainly ahead (of other countries in the region) at the economic and trade levels. But we should also lead the way on the political front," Daka said.

"How come that we encouraged Iraqis to take part in elections and hosted Iraqi elections on our soil while even officials of sports clubs in our country are appointed?" Daka asked.

Egypt politics: Mubarak takes the hint (THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT, 2/28/05)

Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, has finally responded to US prompting and to the increasingly agitated demands of his domestic opposition for meaningful democratic reforms. His announcement on February 26th that he wants the constitution changed to allow for the direct election of the president is a potentially revolutionary move. It is only a first step, however, and it is unlikely to prevent Mr Mubarak from securing a fifth term when Egypt’s first contested presidential election takes place in September this year.

Mr Mubarak has resisted calls for radical political reform ever since he assumed power in 1981 following the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat. He has advanced many reasons for his conservative stance. They have included the claim that economic reform should take precedence and that the experience of Algeria, which underwent a bloody civil war in the 1990s, showed the pitfalls of moving too fast towards political pluralism. It has, however, become harder for him to defend this rigid stance in the face of pressure, both from the US and from the grassroots, for democratic opening across the Middle East. The Palestinian and Iraqi elections and the massive street protests in Lebanon have only added to this pressure.

The US president, George W Bush, in two speeches (in November 2004 and February 2005) used similar phrases to encourage Mr Mubarak to adopt political reforms: "The great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East," he said in the more recent version, in his State of the Union address on February 2nd. The Bush administration has also registered its concern about measures taken by Mr Mubarak’s regime against pro-democracy campaigners. The most prominent of these is Ayman Nour, a member of parliament who was arrested at the end of January, three months after securing approval for the formation of a new political party—Al Ghad—whose platform includes pressing for changes to the system for electing the president. Mr Nour has been stripped of his parliamentary immunity and detained for 45 days pending investigation of allegations that he falsified more than 1,000 signatures presented to support his application to found Al Ghad. Another source of pressure on Mr Mubarak has been a group of protestors calling openly for him to leave, under the banner of "kifaya", an Arabic word for "enough".

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 28, 2005 8:40 AM