What democracy do we need in the Arab world?
Ibrahim Helal
“When the republic is lost, media can regain some of the loss…” these were the words chosen by my Lebanese friend, the famous opposition writer Samir Qasir to write to me on the cover of his latest book “Militia against whom?: Lebanon the lost republic”. Samir Qasir was assassinated by bombing his car in Beirut in the morning of 2nd of June. His assassination came days after the first round in the first parliamentary elections in Lebanon held without Syrian army for the first time in 30 years. Samir was one of the main advocates of what he believed as the liberation of Lebanon while ironically he was originally a Palestinian who got the Lebanese citizenship only 15 years ago.
Talking about my late friend was essential, not only for emotional reasons, but to introduce the main issue I would like to tackle in this article: What democracy do we need in the Arab world?”.
Another Lebanese writer, Ghassan Hage, has talked about a very delicate issue: the political economy of life. In his essay for the British Council book: “What would you die for?”, he argued that to understand the readiness to die for one’s community, one needs to understand what it means to live in and through it: to experience the community as the most important source of one’s social life. If God gives us the gift of life, our community gives us the gift of communal life. As such, we live our lives indebted to the community. To die for it is simply to return back the gift.
The link could be clear now between what happened to Samir Qasir and what I want to think aloud. Samir was fully aware of the risks of being objective or even intrusive against the regimes in Lebanon and Syria; he knew that he might die because of what he was saying or writing, but because he believed in giving the community its gift, he continued to be critical and honest. The issue of freedom and democracy was vividly in the centre of his activities.
Back to the main question: What democracy do we need in the Arab world? As Samir and many others in Lebanon have supported demonstrators to fill Beirut’s main squares calling for withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the first round of the elections organised after that withdrawal has witnessed the lowest tern-out in the Lebanese modern history. Only about 30% of the voters have bothered themselves to ‘practise’ the ‘Democracy’ in Beirut. Some constituencies witnessed only 5% turn-out.
There has been a successful ‘boycotting’ campaign running alongside the elections campaign. The reasons for boycotting might be convincing: problems with 2000 elections’ law and many weird coalitions suddenly formed. But the idea of ‘participation through boycotting’ has managed to demonstrate itself in Lebanon after it has done akin in Iraq and Egypt. So again, what democracy could be suitable for us in the Arab countries? And is it justified to boycott just because the ‘rules of the game’ are not perfectly working?
Democracy: Political participation, Pluralism, Peaceful alternation of power and authority, Respecting other opinions, Freedom of expression, Equality in civil rights and obligations, Superiority of the Law, Separation between Jurisdictions, and Accountability… all these preconditions of Democracy which reside in political sciences and history books, are actually missing in the Arab interpretation of Democracy.
The new democrats in the Arab world may have found themselves left out with a little room to apply many of the above-mentioned conditions or features of Democracy. Perhaps Freedom of expression has survived relatively, but has been moulded a bit differently from its western shape. The “Arab democrats” have unearthed a new style of practising their freedom of expression by practising the ‘boycotting’.
This difference in the result was indebted to the fact that the typical Egyptian personality moves slower than the Lebanese one. It took longer for Egyptians to discover the rules of manoeuvre and the new grounds after Mubarak’s initiative. But ultimately in both cases, many of who were calling for the change under similar slogans like “enough”, were the prominent voices for boycotting. So, how can a dream for change be achieved through abandoning the whole ‘game’ just because some rules are not suitable?
Months before both the Lebanese and the Egyptian cases, there was the most famous boycotting experience: the general elections in Iraq. It is not clear what were the ‘real’ reasons for Sunni to boycott the elections, but the move resulted in Sunni absence in the first democratically elected parliament in modern Iraq. But thanks to the complexity of the Iraqi scene, the boycotters were invited to take part in the new government. Their boycotting – a negative practice by nature – ended up positively with inviting them to take part.
A quick comparison between Lebanon and Iraq may reflect how much cultural diversity is possible in a Democratic Society. Or how much Democracy can work in a culturally diversified society. The events in Lebanon and Iraq raised one more question: Is it possible to encourage greater recognition of ‘Diversity’ without also witnessing increasing social and political instability? It is clear that ‘boycotting’ by itself is a call for ‘instability’ by definition.
But, the political participation itself is a new phenomenon by de facto in the Arab world. Thus, boycotting did not come from ‘active politicians’ who experienced politics long enough to ‘chose’ boycotting as a ‘rational’ tactic choice, but perhaps boycotting came as a natural spontaneous reaction to lack of experience and complexity of the scene. So who is responsible for that inexperience and complexity?
The three cases in Lebanon Egypt, and Iraq, readdress the question: what democracy do we – participating or boycotting Arabs – need in the Arab world?
Before trying to answer the question, we can not ignore that many of those how boycotted and still calling for boycotting, are sending a ‘coded message’ to a ‘third party’ which is not literally participating in the Arab political life, but is definitely following it in details. So the boycotting was a future oriented decision – at least in its main actors’ minds, who believed that time would definitely prove them right, especially if the ‘third party’ paid attention to the ‘coded messages’ and sent consequently their own messages to the real players in the Arab politics. To make the argument clearer, the third party is obviously the United States and sometimes some European countries. And a good example of the messages sent by the ‘Third Party’ was the American president George W. Bush statement calling for Mubarak to guarantee free elections in Egypt, and condemning attacking and arresting peaceful demonstrators in Cairo’s streets. Such statement is a new phenomenon in itself; the president of N.1 superpower is following hundreds of demonstrators in Cairo! Dictators can now bury the days when they used to kill tens of thousands of their own people in the name of ‘stability’ without a single objection from the west or the east!
Now, and after thinking briefly of the previous argument, we can try to answer our main question: What Democracy do we need in the Arab World? And who is responsible for our political inexperience and complexity?
Political psychologists admit that ‘Political Mobilisation’ – wherever it is – has many prerequisites and suffer from chronic problems.
Another prerequisite for political mobilisation is that any given movement or group needs to adopt a mythological motto. There must be a great and immeasurable value as a slogan in order to attract the crowd. And if we look back again at the recent Lebanese case, we can find mottos like: The Truth, or the second Independence, or Independence uprising. Those mottos were behind moving/ mobilising tens of thousands to make 14th of March 2005 happened, but the same mottos failed to do akin in the Election Day in Beirut.
If we look at the Arab social/ economic situation, with what we witness of confused religious interpretation to necessity of complying with the Imam’s orders, and mixed with fear from authoritarian repression; it would be extremely difficult to find what motto can overcome all those mentioned obstacles and mobilise millions of people (citizens) in any given Arab society!
The picture will be much bleaker when we look at one of the natural problems accompany the ‘political mobilisation’ by definition: A simple problem known as “the free rider dilemma”, which could be found in many current Arab social practices. The ‘free rider’ is that citizen who totally believes in the ‘motto’ and absolutely driven by the ‘charismatic leader’, but when it comes to actual action, he (she) prefers to let others do the tough job while he (she) can ‘join’ freely if the change happens!
We are living among millions of those free riders. It needs a lot of cultural development in order to reach that feeling of inconsistency required to mobilise the ‘free riders’.
Ironically, vivid cultural differences may sometimes present a source of threat to the ‘I’ when it identifies with the ‘we’ in any small group or community. In many successful political mobilisation cases, the reason of the success was a clear threat to the very existence of the concerned group, community, society, or country. But it always depends on having a clear definition of the group, community, society, or country as a ‘cultural unit’.
So back to the question: what democracy do we need in the Arab world? A possible answer is: we need to re-define ourselves, at any given society, using a cultural background, and cultural tools, in order to reach the mobilisation needed for political participation. What we witnessed of boycotting, and what I expect to witness of it more and more in the near future, was simply because we could not agree on the ‘do’, while it was easier to agree on the ‘non do’. It was always easy to declare our objections, while always difficult to proclaim our alternatives.
Thanks to the fast coming globalisation millions of Arabs – especially the young ones – became more able to understand their common suffering. Watching the growing numbers of Arab satellite channels has moulded a new culture by raising the awareness of the differences between East and west. On another field, many demonstrations in Cairo and Beirut were organised by sms and e-mails. Gradually we can see two Arab communities: the ruling community and the being ruled one, using other words the suppressing community and the suppressed one. And gradually the suppressed community can develop a specific ‘Identity’ depending on cultural differences with the other community. Culture here plays mainly a motivational role by formulating a focal point for movement activity. The relation between cultural development of that ‘new identity’ within the same country and formalisation of the mobilised group is dynamic in that both are responsive to pressures placed upon them by the suppressing community.
So to find out what democracy do we need, it is essential – as suppressed communities – to re-mobilise ourselves after more than half a century of mind-abolishing in the name of the never achieved ‘independence’.
Ibrahim Helal – BBC World Service Trust, June 2005
