Arab Spring’s hits and misses. By Fareed Zakaria. Washington Post, January 30, 2013.
Zakaria:
The
chaos at the second anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising is only the
latest and most vivid illustration that Egypt’s revolution is going off the
rails. It has revived talk about the failure of the Arab Spring and even some
nostalgia for the old order. But Arab dictators such as Hosni Mubarak could not
have held onto power without even greater troubles; look at Syria. Events in
the Middle East the past two years underscore that constitutions are as vital
as elections and that good leadership is crucial in these transitions.
Compare
the differences between Egypt and Jordan. At the start of the Arab Spring, it
appeared that Egypt had responded to the will of its people, had made a clean
break with its tyrannical past and was ushering in a new birth of freedom.
Jordan, by contrast, responded with a few personnel changes, some promises to
study the situation and talk of reform.
But
then Egypt started going down the wrong path, and Jordan made a set of wise
choices.
Put
simply, Egypt chose democratization before liberalization. Elections became the
most important element of the new order, used in legitimizing the new
government, electing a president and ratifying the new constitution. As a
result, the best organized force in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, swept into
power, even though, on the first ballot, only 25 percent
of voters chose its presidential nominee, Mohamed Morsi. The Brotherhood was
also able to dominate the drafting of the constitution. The document had many
defects, including its failure to explicitly protect women’s rights — only four
of the constitutional assembly’s 85 members were women — and language that
seems to enshrine the traditional “character” of the Egyptian family. It also
weakens protections for religious minorities such as the Bahais, who already face
persecution.
Some of
its provisions ban blasphemy and insult and allow for media censorship in the
name of national security. These are all ways to give the government unlimited
powers, which the Muslim Brotherhood has used. More journalists have been
persecuted for insulting Morsi in his six-month presidency than during the
nearly 30-year reign of Mubarak. In November, Morsi declared that his
presidential decrees were above judicial review.
In
Jordan, by contrast, the king did not rush to hold elections (and was widely
criticized for his deliberate pace). Instead, he appointed a council to propose
changes to the constitution. The members consulted many people in Jordan and in
the West to determine how to make the country’s political system more democratic
and inclusive. A series of important changes were approved in September 2011.
They transferred some of the king’s powers to parliament and established an
independent commission to administer elections and a court to oversee the
constitutionality of legislation.
The
commission recently got its first use. The election was boycotted by Jordan’s
Muslim Brotherhood on the grounds that the changes were too small and that
power still resided with the king. But 70 percent
of eligible voters registered, and 56 percent
turned out at the polls, the highest turnout in the region. Many critics of the
king and government were elected; 12 percent
of the winners were opposition Islamist candidates. Thanks to a quota the
commission set, 12 percent of the new parliament’s
members are female. King Abdullah II retains ultimate authority, but the new
system is clearly a step in the transition to a constitutional monarchy.
Morocco
has taken the same route as Jordan. It enacted constitutional reforms in 2011.
In the elections that followed, Morocco’s Islamist Party won 107 of the 395
seats in parliament and formed a government. The head of this government,
Abdelilah Benkirane, while a feisty critic of the West, has also spoken firmly
about protecting the rights of minorities, explicitly including Jews, who he
noted have lived in Morocco for centuries and are an integral part of the
country.
The
Arab world’s two largest experiments in democracy, Iraq and Egypt, have,
unfortunately, poor choices in common. Both placed elections ahead of
constitutions and popular participation ahead of individual rights. Both have
had as their first elected leaders strongmen with Islamist backgrounds who have
no real dedication to liberal democracy. The results have been the
establishment of “illiberal democracy” in Iraq and the danger of a similar
system in Egypt.
The
best role models for the region might well be two small monarchies. Jordan and
Morocco have gone the opposite route, making measured reforms and liberalizing
their existing systems. The monarchies have chosen evolution over revolution.
So far, it seems the better course.
