The rhetoric and reality of reform in the Arab world The Daily Star

Opinion, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

The rhetoric and reality of reform in the Arab world

The Daily Star

9/30/03

The annual convention of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in Egypt has just ended with a unanimous endorsement of a sweeping reform program proposed by the son of the country’s president.

This is good news and bad news. It is good news when any group of people in any quarter of the Arab world speaks the language of reform. Even though reform means different things to different people, it remains a positive phenomenon that ruling elites, political activists and ordinary citizens alike feel the need to call for reform as a top priority.

But it is bad news when the promises of reform are made by the same ruling power elite who should be the very object of the needed reforms. We have too many examples in the Arab world, for example, of incumbent governments that launch human rights watchdog groups whose task is to watch the governments that launched them. It is also worrying that reform pledges emanate from the same ruling elites year after year, as is the case in several Arab countries where reform is a prominent and now routine public policy issue.

The Egyptian case is important because of two things: Egypt, and Arab political reform. Egypt is a leader among Middle Eastern societies, and it has been ever since Middle Eastern societies came into being thousands of years ago. Despite its recurring economic ups and downs, and its political shifts between left and right, Egypt still influences trends in many parts of the region. Its condition, direction, and fate take on transnational significance for these reasons.

It is also one of the Arab countries in the most urgent need of reform, yet simultaneously a state where the rhetoric and promise of reform have been consistently more robust than the results on the ground. Reform in Egypt, along with Syria and Iran, ranks very high on the regional priority list. Therefore the reiteration of this promise at the NDP convention last week deserves special attention, both for the well-being that it would promote in Egypt and the impacts it would have throughout the region.

The son of the president of Egypt himself expressed the two hopes that permeate many hearts and minds throughout the Arab world: that the commitment to reform is firm and irrevocable, and that the real criterion for success is whether the reform agenda is actually implemented. He is very right on both counts. Yet the credibility of the process that we witness in Egypt and many other countries remains irritatingly erratic. It is particularly problematic when the call for, and the promise of, reform become elements in a recurring mantra, taking on the characteristics of components in an annual report that must be repeated regularly.

The NDP and its young new leaders should break the fraying mold of Arab ruling establishments whose promises of substantial reform are only mildly and partly implemented, leaving essentially unchanged the real wielding of power and its accountability in society.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).