Another light goes out in Egypt

Egypt, headed by the ineradicable President Hosni Mubarak, has long been a key US ally, and likes to see itself as a “moderate” administration taking careful steps towards democratisation. Mubarak and his cohorts present themselves to the West as democrats who are nevertheless forced to take harsh measures in order to hold back the destabilising tide of political Islam, as represented in the Muslim Brotherhood. For the most part, the US is happy to turn a blind eye to the regime’s domestic abuses in the interests of wider strategic cooperation.

Yet in the same week as Condoleeza Rice announced a $13bn military aid package to the country, the regime moved decisively to end the career of its most credible rival for years – not a crazed, bearded bogeyman like the ones Mubarak conjures up to deflate western pressure towards political liberalisation, but rather a young, intelligent, lawyer with a passion for liberal democracy and human rights.

Ayman Nour, who was imprisoned in late 2005 on spurious charges of forging powers of attorney in order to set up his “Party of Tomorrow,” received a double blow on Tuesday, which could well have finished his political career for good. Just an hour before judges in one courtroom announced the refusal of his plea for release on the grounds of ill health (Nour suffers from diabetes and cardiac problems but the court decided that “his heart is strong enough” to put up with Egypt’s brutal prison system), the Political Parties Committee, a body created, it appears, for the express purpose of hindering the establishment of credible opposition parties, decided to appoint Nour’s rival Moussa Mustapha Moussa to the leadership of “Tomorrow”. Thus Nour is out of the game and his party divides and collapses. Mubarak 2, Democracy nil.

The Mubarak clan have clear motives for destroying Nour. While every official in the ruling NDP (the National Democratic Party – basically a rubber-stamping organisation for diktats from the presidential palace) denies that there is any plan for power to pass from Mubarak to his son Gamal, all appearances suggest that such a project is in the works. Yet Mubarak Snr’s recent constitutional amendments, while much-adorned with caveats, may mean that Mubarak Jnr., who can probably not quite get away with an actual coup, will have to face a multi-candidate presidential election in order to take power when his father finally leaves office. The presence of credible alternatives like Ayman Nour is thus simply unacceptable.

The threat became obvious early in 2005, when Dr Nour, set up the “Tomorrow” party in order to run against Mubarak Snr. in the country’s first ever contested presidential elections. While Nour took 7% of the vote (or 13%, according to independent observers), his challenge was marred by a campaign of smearing and intimidation against him. This campaign, which included threatening telephone calls and the publication of unsavoury “facts” about Nour’s wife, Gamila Ismael, came at around the same time as Nour and five other members of “Tomorrow” were charged with forgery relating to signatures needed to set up the party.

Nour’s trial was marked by blatant judicial prejudice, including the defendant being barred from the courtroom, the defence team being denied access to copies of the allegedly forged signatures, and further refusal by the court to subpoena documents crucial to the defence’s case. One of Nour’s co-defendants, who had made a pre-trial confession indicting Nour, retracted said confession, saying he had made it under coercion. The Judge at first refused to let the retraction be added to the record, then refused to order the protection of the defendant from state reprisals.

(Source: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/07/egypt12161.htm)

All of this adds up to what Human Rights Watch called a “terrible advertisement for President Mubarak’s supposed reform agenda, and for Egypt’s judiciary.”

Various human rights organisations, as well as governments around the world (including the US, to their credit) have criticised the trial as politically motivated. Last week’s double blow to Nour and “Tomorrow” leaves the liberal opposition in Egypt stranded, without a captain or a boat, and the presidential palace ringing with the sound of hands rubbing together in glee. If I was cynical, I would suggest that the fundamentalist bogeymen, having lost one of their rivals for the heart of Egypt, are perhaps rubbing their hands together too.