The West’s troubling silence in
the face of Egypt’s sham election
What’s truly instructive about
the sad state of affairs in Egypt isn’t Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s horrible but
all-too-predictable behaviour as the dictatorial head of Egypt’s military
junta. Rather, it’s the silence of the West that’s most revealing
By AHMED ABDELKADER
ELPANNANN*
Thu., April 5, 2018
You may not have heard about it,
but a presidential election was held in Egypt last month under what might be
the country’s most politically repressive and unfair conditions in modern
history.
The whole episode revealed rather
clearly the international community’s double standard when it comes to
stomaching autocrats. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ran as the incumbent with
virtually no competition and cruised to victory with an absurd 97 per cent of
the vote, while barely 41 per cent of registered voters showed up to the polls.
In other words, the whole thing was an utter sham.
Since taking over as president
after a military coup toppled the democratically elected Mohammed Morsi in
2013, Sisi has presided over one of the region’s most repressive regimes. Egypt
has become a de facto dictatorship under him, albeit one that holds fake
elections every once in a while. The slow and low voter turnout last week
prompted the regime to televise time and again on its state media outlets that
failing to vote is a crime.
Places of worship, universities
and sports clubs were all used to campaign by Sisi in violation of election
laws. Young voters were threatened with arrest if they didn’t vote.
Government-owned newspapers and media outlets were exploited. Sisi prefers not
to take chances. He had to have a clear path to victory. So he rounded up and
intimidated every major candidate who threw his name into the race.
Ahmed Shafik, a remnant of the
Mubarak era who ran and lost against Morsi in 2012, withdrew his candidacy this
past January after receiving threats from the Sisi administration. Sami Anan, a
former military chief of the Egyptian army, was disqualified for “inciting
against the armed forces” and arrested by state police with 30 of his
campaigners. The list goes on. In the end, Sisi ended up running against a
stooge candidate who, up until this January, was collecting nomination
signatures for Sisi.
Yet the truly instructive aspect
of this sad state of affairs isn’t Sisi’s horrible but all-too-predictable
behaviour as the dictatorial head of Egypt’s military junta. Rather, it’s the
international community’s silence — and the West’s in particular — that’s most
revealing.
This was the same cohort of
countries and leaders who derided Morsi after getting elected fairly as
president in 2012. And yet the West, which praised Sisi’s ascent and
Morsi’s fall years ago as transition into democracy, now has nothing
to say about Egypt’s current regime of total repression. Feel free to say what
you want about Morsi: he misgoverned, he wasn’t inclusive enough, he made
plenty of gaffes.
But while there was much to
criticize and disagree about, Egyptians of all convictions were at least able
to speak, advocate, and protest. While he was constantly chastised by Western
media and politicians and repeatedly told that “democracy is more than the
ballot box,” the generals who threw away the ballot box and who are running the
most repressive and violent regime in Egypt’s modern history get a carte
blanche. What’s undeniable is that Morsi was elected in a highly
contested race by the Egyptian people. It was the only fair election
that ever took place in the entire history of Egypt.
Morsi governed in a time of
difficult transition and within a freer system that had plenty of
counter-balancing forces, such as the judiciary. There was at least a
separation of powers at that time. Can the same be said about Sisi? Not even
close. The man has monopolized the entire government under an iron fist,
something that Egyptians (and many other Arab populations) are all too familiar
with. He has taken Egypt all the way back to the pre-Arab Spring stage and
further.
Sisi maintains his monopoly on
power via classically dictatorial maneuvers like intimidating potential
opponents (one of Anan’s notable surrogates was mysteriously beaten), gutting
the free press, and blocking over 500 civil society and human rights websites.
None of it is a secret.
But of course, the underlying
problem in Egypt isn’t who wins or loses elections. The problem is that there’s
absolutely no respect for human rights or the rule of law. According to
the HRW
2018 World Report 378 persons were been disappeared in 2017, 800
persons sentenced to death under Sisi, and 17 journalists remain detained.
Since the military coup Egyptian authorities have arrested over 60,000
political prisoners including women and children. Torture has become
systematic. The international community also seems to be totally fine with all
of this, as long as they have a pliant Pharaoh sitting in Cairo. The only way
forward to a stable, democratic, and prosperous Egypt is to protect freedom,
respect the dignity of the human being, and honour the democratic choices of
the people.
What happens in Egypt is not
irrelevant to our own lives. A stable democracy in Egypt is good for the region
and the world. It is good for peace, it is good for security, it is good for
prosperity and commerce, and it is good for our collective conscience. It is
time for us to stand with the people and not with their oppressors.
* Ahmed Abdelkader Elpannann is
the founder and president of Egyptian Canadian Coalition for Democracy (ECCD).
ECCD was founded to provide a platform and lend support to Canadian and
Egyptian advocates of democracy and human rights in Egypt. Ahmed is a former
board member of the Canadian Muslim Forum and the Canadian Citizens movement,
He is a telecom engineer and technology entrepreneur by day.
