The Beginning of the End
American-Egyptian political relations appear to have become tattered in the past week. The popular uprising among young, educated Egyptians - not entirely shared in popularity or determination or intention by all of their parents and the Egyptian middle class - and opportunistically being used by Mohamed El Baradei in co-operation born of political convenience with the Muslim Brotherhood has cast a dark shadow on the long-term relationship.At the princely cost of almost two billion a year, the American taxpayer has been subsidizing stability and a modicum of peace in the Middle East. While most of that funding has gone toward the Egyptian military, a vital bulwark of the country, some most certainly helped President Mubarak fund heavily subsidized bread and cooking oil to impoverished Egyptians. The trade-off of financial support for the alliance between the two and Egypt's peace with Israel may now seen to be in peril.
Not, it would seem, if those loyal still to President Mubarak and his NDP party manage to take over the reins of government, nor if President Mubarak, by some miraculous stunt of sheer dogged determination hangs on, even at his fairly elderly 82, but certainly if the opposition parties, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties from which it would have support, have anything to do with that decision to cast Israel aside.
It took courage as well as a love for his country for President Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, to travel to Israel and initiate a peace agreement. He well understood that continued hostilities leading to one war after another was too costly in terms of financing, dignity (constantly on the losing end), stability and Egyptian lives. To his great credit, President Hosni Mubarak took on that burden of peace with the enemy, for burden it was, despised by the other countries of the Middle East.
Now, because autocrats cannot seem to recognize that human beings require a sense of personal responsibility in the trajectory of their own aspirations and rewards for their investments in their future, and the freedom to have ideas, to support the political parties of their choice, to freely exchange the news of the day, this particular one has inscribed his own downfall from power. All is not yet lost to him, and he may yet skilfully, but through underwriting much of the change Egyptians now demand, turn things to his favour.
But for the party he leads, and those loyal to him, as well as his own more immediate plans, it is obvious that their days of unopposed glory when political opponents could be silenced, exiled, imprisoned, propagandized, is over. The NDP will have to transpose itself into a party delivering what it must now promise to Egyptians; social and political equality and opportunities, with an open media and equitable and fair justice system.
Perhaps the vocal tens of thousands who have come out stolidly determined to ensure Hosni Mubarak's ouster will prevail in the end, perhaps it will be their elders who find little to fault in the only president they have ever known who will prevail, satisfied that their lot in life, social and political, will have been improved with necessary and promised new measures to address their legitimate grievances.
Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Monday, January 31, 2011
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