Seven Oaks Magazine.

Cairo, Egypt - Last summer, in her inaugural trip to the Middle East as U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice urged the Mubarak government to expedite the implementation of democracy in Egypt, heralding the upcoming “free elections” as a step towards freedom. The ensuing elections, replete with a television campaign by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) celebrating Egypt’s first free multi-candidate elections, were marred by violence and repression, tallying a 26% percent turnout of the population registered to vote. According to human rights watch, most of the violence was perpetrated by supporters of the NDP who harassed, barricaded, and intimidated opposition voters, leading to the death of 14 people and the arrest of more than 1,600 Muslim Brotherhood supporters. While the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned from organizing a political party in Egypt for decades, it nevertheless runs independent candidates in elections and has scored a substantial amount of seats in parliament, despite the political barrier. Regardless of the obvious controversy around this election, the U.S. turned a blind eye to the anti-democratic sins of its strategic ally and reserved criticism after its resounding victory, opting instead to wait out the storm and return in a more timely fashion.

This past month in Cairo the election discrepancies have come back to haunt the Mubarak government, which has in turn embarrassed the U.S. with its increasingly brutal response. Some members of the Egyptian judiciary have broken off with their brethren in the Judge’s club and began to point the finger at Mubarak and the NDP, citing election fraud. The government quickly moved to silence these renegades, and in response hundreds of protesters have turned out in the streets in support of the actions of the judiciary. The peaceful protests began on May 11 and have continued every Thursday since in and around the judicial buildings and Midan-Talat Harb, in Cairo’s busy downtown district. The protests have been met with the arrival of over 500 uniform police, riot police, and plain clothes Special Forces who have not hesitated to use force against the protestors. In the one sided melee that followed the police crackdown on May 11, hundreds of protesters were beaten, hauled away, and detained without charge. Two reporters were arrested, and a field reporter from Al-Jazeera was reportedly sexually harassed by police. In the most recent protest two men, Karim al-Shair and Mohamed Al-Sharqawy, were arrested and tortured by police.

The crisis occurring on the streets of Cairo has brought many of the Mubarak regime’s ugly human rights violations to the forefront. As the Islamicist Muslim Brotherhood and leftist Kifaya (enough) party attempt to exploit public discontent by showing a presence at these rallies, the supporters of the imprisoned Ayman Nour, leader of El-Ghad (Tomorrow), the main opposition party in the recent elections, have thrown their takaya in the ring. The sentencing judge gave no reason for the 5 year sentence handed down to Nour shortly after the elections, but the punishment apparently seemed fit for one accused of forgery in registering members into El-Ghad. Nour, suffering from diabetes, currently sits in an Egyptian prison and it is unclear to what extent his health is being cared for.

In addition, the government has taken advantage of the recent bombings on the Sinai to extend its Emergency Measures Law by two years, in place since the assassination of Anwar Sadaat in 1981, whereby the police are free to arrest and detain anyone without cause or provocation. The response from the U.S. state department has been a collective slap on their own foreheads, as the removal of the emergency law was one of the key promises delivered by Mubarak to Rice during her visit.

So where do the rogue judges who have begun to oppose Mubarak come from, and why the sudden decision to challenge the government? The answer is found in the long and sordid history of the judicial-state relationship in Egypt. Leaving aside the convoluted details, it is imperative to note that in 2000 the judiciary broke with the customary status-quo of complete independence from the state established under the British occupation to call for direct supervision of electoral proceedings. This campaign was buttressed by the constitution which calls for judges to monitor ballot boxes (one per box). As the ‘free elections’ drew near, the judges’ club demanded the government assure access to voter registration, and insisted that judges witness the transfer of ballot boxes. The draft laws attached to these demands have yet to be implemented and obvious election rigging and violations have incited at least two judges to expose many of their own as corrupt and to blow the whistle on the regime.

The response from the public is key to the dilemma faced by both Egypt and its western allies. With the U.S. struggling to maintain puppet regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and losing more face in the Islamic world by condemning the free and transparently elected Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it has had to rely on its old ally Egypt to represent a successful U.S. supported example of transitional democratic Arab state. Egypt receives the third largest contribution of monetary aid from the U.S. in the world (behind Iraq and Israel), and the U.S. would love nothing more than for Egypt to cease damaging its already tarnished global reputation for hypocritically supporting regimes that serve as political and economic allies regardless of ideology or human rights record. For Egypt, the cries of “democracy now!” on the street are often led by the partisan Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, who are not necessarily the most democratic of alternatives, but nevertheless embody the will of the people – a chance to have their voices count in the affairs of their country. Egypt’s citizens are not fooled by the status-quo fallacy that Egypt’s judiciary has acted independently of the state for over a hundred years, since it doesn’t take a Dick Cheney hunting trip accident to realize that law is often nothing more than an extension of politics - dangling democracy as the decoy while the people are nothing more than sitting ducks.