Two years ago, I was sitting inside my high school biology classroom ignoring the diagram of the digestive system I was supposed to be labeling in favour of a discussion about the fall of then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. After months of protests calling for him to step down, Mubarak had finally relinquished his role as Egypt’s head of state — bringing an end to 30 years of dictatorship in the North African nation. Last week, I sat at my desk at my current co-op, momentarily ignoring the Excel data that just had to be crunched to instead follow real time coverage of the fall of current Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. To an outside observer the events seem eerily similar. But there’s a world of difference separating the two.
Morsi, unlike Mubarak, is a democratically elected leader. In fact, he’s Egypt’s first democratically elected leader. After the fall of Mubarak’s government, Egypt faced the most difficult yet least discussed aspect of the revolutionary process. What to do, once the dictatorship is gone. For the first few months in 2011, the Egyptian people had a difficult yet well-defined task — go out in the streets and protest. But once they had achieved their primary goal, there was a country to rebuild and no one to lead it. It took months of hard work before Egypt was able to hold its first-ever democratic elections which culminated in a victory for Morsi and his party, the Muslim Brotherhood. And while it wasn’t the smoothest election in the world, it was a period of hope for the Egyptian populace. They had survived their first democratic election. It was a new beginning.
A year later, Morsi’s government has been forcibly removed from power by a military coup. Egypt seems to have returned to the period of uncertainty that followed Mubarak’s take down. But the end of Mubarak’s reign was also a cause for celebration. It represented the end of dictatorship and the hopeful beginning of an era of democracy. The fall of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, in many ways feels like a failure. Not just a failure on Morsi’s part to govern, but the failure of Egypt as a nation. When the removal of a democratic government is reminiscent to that of a dictatorship’s — something has gone wrong.
If you were to follow mainstream Western media, there’s a high chance you might end up believing that Morsi’s removal from office was merely a result of the much ignored non-Muslim population of Egypt reaching their boiling point of frustration and finally demanding a secular government. This is a ridiculous claim and is representative of how little effort has been exerted by mainstream media to analyze Egypt’s political climate. Why take the time to understand a situation when there’s an easy target? All problems in the Middle East must begin and end with Islam. As their name suggests, the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular party. And yes, Egypt has a significant non-Muslim population that was unhappy with the election of a religious government. But while separation of church and state is generally considered to be part and parcel with democratic governments, it is by no means a necessity. The people of Egypt did not take to the streets en masse merely to demand a secular government. In order to grasp this, we have to realize that the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascent to power had very little to do with their religious beliefs or even their political platform. Their main opposition was a party comprised of supporters of the Mubarak regime who openly declared their intentions to undo the work of the revolution. Morsi was largely considered the lesser of two evils. The causes of the current situation in Egypt require us to dig deeper than the religious beliefs of the ruling party. The failure of Egypt’s first democratic government is rooted in our definition of democracy, the concept of legitimate government and our view of the revolutionary process.
It’s hard to decide how to react to an event when it can simultaneously be called both a revolution and a military coup. Such is the case for the fall of the Morsi government. There is no question that a significant portion of the public wanted Morsi to step down. But he was a democratically elected leader who was forcibly removed from power by the military. This is the definition of a military coup — an act considered to be in direct opposition to democracy. For Morsi’s opponents, the military’s role in his take down is a sign that the military is simply doing their job, which is first and foremost to defend the public. Yes, the military is controlled by the government but their job is protecting the citizens of the country. According to the Department of National Defence, the role of the Canadian forces is to protect Canada and Canadian interest and values. When public sentiment turns against the government, technically, the military should be honour-bound to side with the public. As the use of police brutality by the government in Turkey, or locally, the countless allegations of police abuse during the G20 summit in Toronto show, this is sometimes not the case. The police and the military are constantly used by governments the world over to control the public and silence dissent. This is just as true in Egypt where police brutality was a major cause of the revolution. The foreign-funded Egyptian military is simply taking advantage of an opportunity to gain power. And their best chance was to side with the people that wanted Morsi gone. The military’s role in this situation should be condemned. But while we cannot condone the role of the military in removing a democratic government from power, it’s a lot harder to decide how I feel about the public’s role.
In a speech, outlining his refusal to step down, Morsi made it clear that he believed his government was legitimate. They had been elected democratically, they had received a majority and they had a mandate to govern. What gives the public, let alone the military, the right to remove this government from power? There’s a very interesting area to explore here — in what circumstances does it become okay to remove a democratically elected government from power? Does a 51% majority in an election give a party carte blanche to rule as they see fit until the next election? What is the trigger that will allow the public to remove them from office? Morsi insisted that his government had legitimacy to rule. And by the definition of any developed nation, he was correct. In fact, considering the standards they’ve set its shocking that Western governments haven’t condemned the coup in Egypt. It makes one wonder, what the West stands to gain from a politically unstable Egypt. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once stated that, a majority government meant that he could do what he wanted. And if the public didn’t like it, they were free to show him at the next election. Such a bold statement from a democratic leader is symptomatic of a larger problem facing the world. The decline of democracy.
Democracy in the West has come to mean a system in which every four years or so, there must be an election held. Elections have become the ultimate symbol of democracy. This system, which can more accurately be termed a “ballotocracy,” is mostly successful in the West because it keeps the public from revolting. Due to the economic strength of Western nations, quality of life in Western countries tends to be higher and the population tends to be more content, therefore easier to control. An election every four years is accepted in lieu of real political engagement. Most people do not desire anything more. Why question a system that seems to work for you? But this set of norms doesn’t translate to developing countries that don’t have the economic strength to provide the population with a lifestyle that distracts them. So when a country like Egypt, which faces severe economic problems, tries to enter this Western defined democratic realm, the holes in the system become much harder to ignore. For many Egyptians, the fall of the Morsi government represents a truth that we in the West have yet to grasp: Elections, rather than being the symbol of democracy that many claim them to be, are actually a symbol of the illusion of democracy. Emma Goldman, labour rights activist and revolutionary, said it best: “Voting doesn’t change a thing. If it did, they’d make it illegal.” Democracy isn’t about institutions, it’s about people. We can’t wave a magic wand, hold an election and expect a nation to transform into a democracy. For the people who rallied on the streets of Egypt to have their voices heard, it’s clear that they haven’t had that opportunity. What is their role in the new government? How do we ensure that the people behind the revolution actually get a say in the future of the nation? Part of the answer lies in redefining democracy. At its heart democracy is supposed to be about inclusivity and participation. It’s a system where people should be able to directly participate in the making of all decisions that affect them.
The other change that’s necessary is to reevaluate how we view the revolutionary process itself. I have heard a lot of references to Egypt’s “second revolution” recently. This phrase not only signifies a misunderstanding of the current situation in Egypt, it also signifies a misunderstanding of revolution itself. Revolution is a process not an event. So the current events in Egypt and the events that began two years ago in 2011 are all part of the same revolution. Risking one’s life to march in the streets in order to bring about change is a brave and terrifying act. For most of us, it’s unimaginable. Yet, this action is simply a necessary first step in bringing about revolution. We need to start thinking about what follows. When the streets have emptied, when the dictator is gone, what follows? And the people who fought so hard to make those things happen have to start considering the role they should play in rebuilding. The birth of Egypt’s revolution in 2011 was characterized as being led by young people, but after the take down of Mubarak those young people seemed to have disappeared from Egyptian politics. None of the major parties running in the election had been involved in the revolution in any major capacity. Why was this so? Why is it that young people can be trusted to sacrifice their lives and bring down dictatorships but when it comes to the actual work of rebuilding and running a country, everyone turns to established parties with experience? And why is that young people can find the motivation to bring down a dictatorship but seem reticent to get involved in the political arena and actually build the kind of government they fought for? Much of it stems from a distrust of government among youth and a disbelief in the power of governments to bring about real change. But part of the revolutionary process is to break this cycle. The people who start revolutions have to stay involved throughout the process in order for it to be truly successful.
It’s easy to characterize these issues as the problems of far-off developing nations but they hit much closer to home than we realize. Last year, the Quebec student strike also successfully managed to evict a democratically elected government from power after months of protests. However, the reticence of the leaders of the student strike movement to enter the political arena allowed a similar government with a different face to take their place. This proved a temporary victory for the students, but the cause of the movement — accessible education — was lost. On the issue of legitimate government, Canada provides one of the best case studies for questioning whether a government is democratic. The current Conservative government has a majority mandate, which in our system means that they can pass any piece of legislation they wish and appoint anyone they wish to the Supreme Court as well as the Senate. If you have a basic understanding of Canadian government institutions you realize this is a tremendous amount of power, and that’s not even considering the fact that the government gained this power with only 40% support. The Conservative government has a mandate, but one that they only got because of a broken electoral system. There is no question as to whether public sentiment has turned against the government (it always was against them), but because we have defined democracy by elections, they are allowed to rule for the next five years. In five years, the Harper government could cause significant damage to Canada. What’s especially egregious about their actions though is that the majority of the public opposes them. For a government to continue to rule as they wish while public sentiment is against them with no avenue to create change is characteristic of a dictatorship, not a democracy. As a populace, Canadians are far too apathetic and unwilling to challenge the status quo.
Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood faced what must have seemed like insurmountable challenges to a new government. They had to rebuild Egypt from the ground up in the wake of a revolution. They had only been given a year to prove themselves and have an endless list of explanations for their failures. They had offered to work with the opposition. They had even held a referendum on the proposed constitution. One year in power after 30 years of dictatorship isn’t enough time to truly test a government. They should have been given the chance to rule — a real chance. I cannot say the same for the current Canadian Government. Perhaps, it’s time we redefine our understanding of democracy and question the system we live in. There’s no rule out there that says we have to wait until 2015 to remove the Harper government from power.
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