The world has been rocked by great events these past three weeks. The fall of Hosni Mubarak after thirty years of iron rule in Egypt has given that country’s youth new hope for the future. That Mubarak was bound to fall may have come to a surprise for most pundits and experts but the road ahead will no doubt be a lot bumpier and complicated. Mubarak was quite frankly expendable. Egypt has since 1952 been ruled by it’s military starting with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s overthrow of the Monarchy in 1952, Anwar Sadat’s succession in 1970 following Nasser’s death, and Mubarak’s rise to power in 1981 following Sadat’s assassination.
What Egypt has experienced these past 60 years is essentially strong executive power backed by a military that is said to own 30% of the nation’s economy. Parliaments have come and gone but they have always had little if any power, with elections manipulated by Mubarak and guaranteeing his party both a majority of seats and little opposition. Egypt is officially a Republic, but the other 21 Arab States have much in common with it regardless of whether they call themselves a Monarchy or Republic. The main common points are a strong ruler or executive backed by the military, a weak Parliament, a unitary system with few powers delegated to the regions, and few checks and balances. More importantly, few countries in the Middle East are based on the Rule of Law as it’s understood here in the West. Corruption, lack of transparency, disrespect for both minority and women’s rights, all add up to a political and legal system that is failing its people, especially the young, who comprise a majority of the population but who enjoy few of the benefits. High unemployment among the young along with the feeling that the system is based on who you know is a recipe for disaster.
What Egypt needs is what most of the Middle East needs: the creation of a meritocracy that guarantees basic liberties like freedom of association and expression, along with a system of checks and balances that makes certain no one leader or institution like the military ever usurps all of the nation’s power. Having sons succeed their fathers as occurred in Syria, Morocco, and Jordan must end if citizens are to feel they have a stake in the system.
A key way to disperse power is to introduce a form of Federalism into the Arab model of governance. The Arab portion of the Middle East is a fairly large area populated by over 300 million people dispersed in 22 countries. Many of these countries like Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are quite large. Others like Iraq, are smaller but contain more ethnic and religious diversity, with certain groups dominating in certain areas. What is required then is a system where Constitutional divisions of power are equally shared between regional and central governments, much as they are shared in countries like Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland. This of course would be a completely new method of governing in the Middle East. But new ideas are exactly what this part of the world needs, as it continues to fall behind the rest of the world economically, culturally, and politically. Federalism could be used to protect the rights of ethnic and religious minorities like Coptic Christians in Egypt and Berbers in Morocco and Algeria. It could also serve as a means of grooming future national leaders, much as becoming governor of a U.S. state has become the primary way of attaining the White House, President Obama excepted. In addition, any National Leader attempting to usurp Constitutional powers would have local governors to deal with who would challenge such intrusions in court. Local governance implies the creation of State Assemblies with clear constitutional powers which cannot be trampled on by the National Government.
An independent judiciary would in addition serve to keep the National Government in check and to keep an eye on any National Leader attempting to steal powers belonging either to the other branches of government or to state governments. For too long the mindset in the Middle East has been to concentrate all political power in one individual. This attitude has to change, something which both Monarchs and Military Generals seem to have difficulty accepting. A Parliament that is freely elected within the scope of a multi-party system is essential if citizens are to feel they have true representation in their political system.
A major challenge will be how to keep the military in the barracks. This issue will be put to test in the months to come in Egypt as the Army is asked to defend rather than to rule as it’s now doing. Will the Egyptian military hand real power over to the Egyptian people in September 2011 when elections are held? And what type of Constitution will Egyptians be asked to vote on? Will it be a Constitution that is essentially secular while respecting the aspirations and feelings of its Muslim majority? Will it respect the rights of it’s Coptic Christian minority? Will women have the same rights as men in every aspect of the law? Will there be a system of checks and balances equally divided between three branches of government, namely, the Executive (where Presidential powers are exercised), the Legislative ( where democratically elected Parliaments pass laws), and the Judiciary ( whose role it would be to maintain the rule of law and assure that Constitutional powers are respected by the other two branches of government)? And lastly, will the regions have their own local Parliaments with exclusive jurisdiction over matters said to be local in nature? Here the challenge will be not only with convincing the Military that federalism is a good idea, but also the average citizen, who is used to being ruled by a central government run by a strong man. No doubt some will fear secession but this can easily be dealt with by constitutionally guaranteeing the nation’s physical and legal integrity. Also, since the army would remain with the Federal government, it would become difficult for regions to seek secession. Iraq is currently experimenting with federalism but Iraq is a bad example and can easily be distinguished from other Arab states. To begin with, it is predominantly Shia as opposed to Sunni as is the case with most of the Arab states, and it has a large Kurdish community in the northern region fighting for autonomy, something lacking elsewhere in the Arab world.
Time will tell whether citizens in the Middle East, including in Egypt, are ready and willing to make drastic changes to how they live. This will take boldness, vision, and a willingness to try new forms of governance that clearly seem to be working elsewhere.
