Elections Are Not Democracy. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, July 6, 2013.
A lesson from Egypt.
Democracy in Egypt needs more than an election. By Dennis Ross. USA Today, July 7, 2013.
McCarthy:
The
democracy fetish would be worth having if it were about promoting real democracy.
Instead, as illustrated by media coverage of the military coup that ousted
Egypt’s popularly elected Muslim Brotherhood president, we’re still confusing democratic legitimacy with legitimate democracy.
The
latter is real — a culture of liberty that safeguards minority rights.
Attaining it is a worthy aspiration, but one that requires years of patient,
disciplined, and often unpopular work. The former is an illusion — the pretense
that if a Muslim country holds popular elections and elects totalitarian
Islamists, voila, it has a “democracy,” and progressives the world over will
regard it as such.
The
confusion is nowhere better illustrated than in neoconservative commentary,
where two most admirable premises — the transcendent power of freedom and the
imperative of confronting evil — are seemingly at war with each other. Thus do
the Wall Street Journal’s editors
recount the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, elected
Egypt’s president just a year ago, in the flush of Spring Fever:
His
election was the best feature of his rule, which had descended into
incompetence and creeping authoritarianism. Mr. Morsi won the election narrowly
over a Mubarak-era political leftover, but he soon reinforced fears that the
Brotherhood would use its new power to build an Islamist dictatorship. He tried
to claim near-absolute powers by decree to force through a draft constitution
written by Islamists and boycotted by everyone else.
No, not
exactly.
Morsi
did not “force through a draft constitution.” He submitted a proposed
constitution to a popular election — the same process that the Journal maintains was “the best feature”
of Morsi’s rule. In that popular election, the constitution drafted by Islamists
was approved by a whopping two-thirds of Egyptians — a fact conveniently
omitted by the Journal’s editors. The
constitution was not “boycotted by
everyone else.” The constituent assembly
was boycotted by non-Islamists when they realized they did not have the numbers
to stop sharia supremacists.
Doesn’t
that sound a lot like the Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature? Remember:
They lacked the votes to defeat Governor Scott Walker’s collective-bargaining
reform, so they tried to derail it by boycotting the democratic process — an
act of sabotage the Journal’s
editors’ rightly rebuked. But there’s a huge difference. Lacking Wisconsin’s
democratic culture, Egypt’s ostensibly democratic process was a farce. That’s
why Egypt’s obstructive democrats were heroes, while Wisconsin’s obstructive
Democrats were rogues.
Democratic
processes — elections, referenda, constitution-drafting — must be conditioned
on a preexisting democratic culture. Otherwise, in a majority-Muslim country
like Egypt, you end up giving totalitarianism the patina of democratic
legitimacy. Quite predictably, when Morsi put the draft constitution to a
countrywide democratic vote, the vast majority of Egyptians used their
self-determining liberty to enshrine liberty-devouring sharia as their fundamental
law.
The
cognitive dissonance is dizzying. Yes, as the Journal’s editors note, Morsi was narrowly elected over Ahmed
Shafiq, a Mubarak-era holdover. But why was that? It was because the forces of
true, pluralistic democracy in Egypt are so fledgling and weak that they could
never have defeated Islamic supremacists on their own. They had to turn to the
old regime.
In the
free elections leading up to Morsi’s election, there was no greater ignominy
than being a Mubarak holdover. In those elections, real democrats and
progressives were thrashed by Islamic supremacists. They lost 78 percent to 22
percent in a referendum on constitutional amendments that allowed the
parliamentary and presidential elections to go forward. They were swamped again
in the parliamentary elections that gave Islamic supremacists a three-to-one
hammerlock on the legislature and thus on the constituent assembly that wrote
the new constitution.
By the
time the presidential election came round, authentic democrats, including members
of persecuted religious minorities, had no choice but to pin their hopes on a
Mubarak holdover — just as this week, they had to rely on a coup by a military
still threaded with Mubarak holdovers. It was the only realistic chance they
had at a semblance of the rights that true democracy implies.
They
lost anyway, even though the transitional military rulers, in a most
undemocratic maneuver, tried to stack the deck in their favor by disqualifying
on bogus grounds the more popular Muslim Brotherhood figure, Khairat al-Shater.
The comparatively unknown Morsi was supremacist Islam’s Plan B. But we are
talking about Egypt, where Western democracy is unabashedly condemned by such
figures as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the revered sharia jurist. In that Egypt —
the Egypt that is — Plan B was good enough to win.
The Journal’s editors again tell only half
the story in observing that Morsi “tried to claim near-absolute powers by
decree” in order to get the sharia constitution implemented. If you buy the
notion that free elections always herald real democracy, you would have
applauded Morsi. He decreed that his “sovereign acts” were unreviewable by the
unelected judiciary — stacked with relics of the Mubarak dictatorship —
specifically to protect the constituent assembly, which that judiciary was
threatening to dissolve before it could complete its work.
Morsi’s
“democratic” logic was bulletproof: His actions were “sovereign” because he was
elected by the people; the constituent assembly warranted sovereign protection
because it had been appointed by a parliament elected by the people; and the
old-regime judges should butt out because the draft constitution would be
submitted to the sovereign people, to decide for themselves in an up-or-down
vote. If you accept the Arab Spring fantasy that a liberty culture is bred by free
elections, then Morsi was using his power to protect Egyptian democracy.
Of
course, we should not accept the Arab Spring fantasy. But that does not make
the Journal’s editors wrong — just
rash. They want what we should all want: a truly democratic Middle East. But
let’s not kid ourselves — it is going to take a very long time to get there.
Core
neoconservative principles are not really at odds. The power of freedom is transcendent. But real freedom cannot
be rushed. Democratic culture has to take root, which is a long-term project in
an anti-democratic society. As a foundational matter, there must be abiding
societal commitments to freedom of conscience, the equal dignity of every
person, economic liberty, the rule of law, and self-determination irrespective
of sharia. Only then will liberty be promoted by free elections — they are the
end of the evolution, not the beginning.
We
disfavor military coups because we are a liberty-loving people who defend civil
rights. In Egypt, at this stage of its development, liberty lovers remain
outnumbered. The massive protests against the Muslim Brotherhood administration
are an encouraging sign that Egypt’s democrats are growing in strength, but
they should not be mistaken for a wholesale rejection of sharia supremacism.
Right now, the authentically democratic ranks remain modest; bear in mind that
it was only seven months ago that the sharia constitution was overwhelmingly
approved. At this point, a military coup — and an enlightened military
leadership that maintains order while giving civil society the time and space
to evolve — is the only chance freedom has. It is by no means certain that
Egypt’s military is up to this daunting task, but it remains the best hope.
The
neocons have also always been right that evil must be confronted and defeated.
Yet that cannot happen unless evil is recognized as such. We must not
rationalize Islamic supremacism and its sharia system as something they are not
— as virtuous, or at least moderate — just because, given the choice, Islamic
societies will vote for them. Egypt’s real democrats are trying to tell us that
there are no moderate totalitarians. We would do well to listen.
