Egypt's Constitutional Amendments

For those who've been failed by their own media sources, Egypt is holding a national referendum tomorrow on a number of constitutional amendments that are billed as "part of a reform package" (the ruling party doesn't go into any more detail than that) but will actually remove all judicial oversight from elections, codify presidential "anti-terrorism" powers including arbitrary indefinite detention of anyone for no reason, and just generally wreck any chance Egypt could have of becoming a decent, functioning political entity anytime in the near future. For a general overview of the situation, read this; if you want a more through analysis of the amendments themselves and the threat they pose for Egypt's political scene, read this; if you want commentary on the US State Dept's nearly complete abandonment of pushing Egypt towards any political reform, read through this blog. Also Baheyya is always awesome, but she doesn't write enough.

The reason I'm concerned about the US response is not because of some essentialist conviction that Arabs can't handle democracy and therefore require external pressures and force from abroad. It's simply because with regards to Egypt, the government couldn't possibly operate a functional tax bureaucracy (2 years ago, less than 5% of Cairenes paid taxes at all; recent tax reforms have perhaps doubled this number but it's still like 8% or so; and even then, it's largely due to local branches of foreign companies paying because otherwise they'd get into legal trouble back home), so it's is responsive to its bankrollers - which means US military aid, which comes to about 2% of Egypt's annual GDP. Anywhere in life, where you get your money from is whom you're responsive to. And it's been proven a number of times, in fact, that
the US is the only significant force with any leverage for political reform in Egypt. The democracy push in 2005 brought about all sorts of reforms, albeit most of them token, and US support did embolden democracy activists in the region and provide them all sorts of cover. Political space definitely opened up. Egypt is not a puppet (especially now that the US, having lost two wars, needs to suck up to everyone in the world) but the US does have significantly more influence over the Egyptian government than the Egyptian people themselves do. (It's also always strange thinking, when I get into a scuff with an Egyptian cop, that my taxes pay his salary. And that's before I even factor in how many tourist dollars I bring in.)

So anyway, the referendum is tomorrow (Monday March 26), and most of the opposition has decided to boycott because they know the election results will be fixed, and that they'd just be legitimizing a farce if they voted. But the purpose of having this national referendum is so that the government can claim, for the sake of greater international legitimacy, to have the support of the majority of the Egyptian people (for the same reason every crackpot dictatorship has to call itself the 'democratic republic' of whatever), and so the way to take that way is to have a mass media spectacle protest. Usually these are downtown, in the main Tahrir square, in front of the Arab League building, the Mugamma (civil service bldg, where you go for visas and licenses and whatnot), the American University in Cairo, etc. So today's is about to start.

The government has sworn not to allow any protests or demonstrations, that they must be prevented from "delaying, opposing and stalling the democratic process". So the lines have been drawn...

I just passed through Tahrir a few hours ago, on the way back from a class at Al Azhar, and it is FILLED with beltagayya (plainclothes thugs), like tons and tons standing in formation waiting for protesters to come by. I've never seen that before... typically they wait in police trucks and occasionally microbuses and only come out when protesters are getting significantly out of hand. This is even with major protests that they've been expecting for ages - the judges last May, Lebanon over the summer, etc. Also these beltagayya look much more like normal people than usual - usually they have black boots and carry police clubs. Now it's jeans and, like, tennis shoes. The gist is: they're really playing it both ways. Egyptians all know that beltagayya are the ones to be afraid of (normal cops never hit you, because they fear the media attention), and the regime is just sticking them out there, daring a response. They're even in formation, so they're not even pretending, not even trying to deceive the Egyptians. But they're wearing more normal clothes than usual, because enough readers/viewers of foreign media ( i.e. the regime's foreign bankrollers) will be so stupid as to think that protesters are just being random and violent and beating each other up, and that the referendum is actually democratic and meaningful.

We'll see how it actually goes. But what saddens me the most is, the plainclothes thugs could beat the crap out of tons of Egyptians, probably rape the women (according to precedent), and then the fixed referendum could move along smoothly.

And they'd get away with it.

I can totally imagine a statement from the Interior Ministry to the effect of "We are not responsible for injuries caused by rowdy chaotic anti-Islamic terrorist protesters who don't represent the silent majority of peace-loving Egyptians losing control of their passions and beating each other up". And they'd get away with this. Especially because protesters in the US sometimes actually are rowdy chaotic terrorism-supporters who lose control of their passions and beat each other up.

Sigh. I'm not optimistic about life right now.