The Fall of Both Mubarak’s Regime and the Legal Opposition Essay

Almost a year ago, Egypt broke into civil unrest when protesters flooded Tahrir Square, demanding the end of Hosnia Mubarak’s regime. Although Mubarak stepped down within two weeks, Egypt is worse off today than it was last January. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), which played a vital role in the January revolution, has now become a violent and oppressive force. On the twenty-ninth of December 2011, the SCAF raided seventeen Egyptian, German, and US run NGOs in search of proof of illegal foreign funding.1 In a statement (A/HRC/18/NGO/77) submitted by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), and the Center for Egyptian Women’s

Democracy is a Greek invention, first practiced in the ancient Greek city of Athens. In the late 20th century, Democracy triumphed over all other major ideological systems, so overpowering was its victory that former critics now began to advocate their own democratic credentials. The vigorous rise of democracy has continued ever since and today there are over 112 self-proclaimed democratic countries around the world(Kekic 2007), whether all these countries are truly democratic or not is debatable and which will be discussed further in the essay. Important questions arise here: will democracies face a formidable opponent in the future? Have democracies remained true to their essence? or have they been breached by competing ideologies? A large majority of these 112 countries are not true democracies, as they do not adhere to the basic democratic credentials of :of the people, by the people and for the people. Serious revisions are needed in the workings of the modern state if democracy, in its true form, is to remain the dominant system. Whether democracy even in its purest form is flawed or not is a different question, one that I will not address in this essay.

It has been six years since Egypt drove itself into oppositions of institutions in 2011. Still to this day, there is no label of the revolution to be a “success” or “failure”. It is easy to stop the moment of a unethical government was taken down, the reconstruction of Egypt and its laws is an ongoing struggle. In American history, there was no specific day when we came out of mass chaos into a united country of freedom and democracy. For Egypt's sake, all we can do is give them time to get the government back on their feet and support them in what they are still going

The Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) was the ruling party in Tunisia from its independence from France in 1956 until its overthrow and subsequent dissolution following Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution in 2011. The RCD is very clearly a state actor, given their standing as a political party and the way in which it and Ben Ali exercised power over branches of government to control the lives of the people of Tunisia. Prior to the revolution, Tunisia was very much a one-party system, where the RCD had the majority of the seats (as much as 161 of the 217 seats in the legislature) (Murphy, 2011, p 299) which gave them almost absolute power in the legislature.

Usually throughout the world, tensions can take years to produce any serious actions, but this was not the case following the Arab Spring. In Egypt, this boiling tension only increased during 2012 with a parliamentary election around the corner; Mohamed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party of Egypt won presidency that summer, but just one year later was violently removed via a military coup endorsed by Nour (as known as the Party of Light) and led to the deaths of many of the FJP’s supporters and the imprisonment of many of its members (Kurzman and Kürkoğlu 103). And even after coup, many revolutionary Islamic groups have derided Islamic political parties for following and being a part of democratic processes due to the lack of jihad, even going so far as to attack and kill Islamic leaders who are supportive of democracy (103-104). This violent behaviour speaks ill of what could happen under a heavily conservative Islamic government, especially considering how damaging autocracies and non-liberal democracies can be even outside of major areas such as human rights, women’s rights, minority rights, religious rights, and the many manner of freedoms liberal democracies

In the people, on the streets, in conversations.”. The desire for the change that was needed, the change in the regime, the change in leadership, had been growing for years before, and finally erupted in 2011 - the Arab Uprisings.

This article focused more on how the survival of a regime relied on the willingness of the military to defect and low levels of social mobilization. Because the levels of unrest and turnout was too large for the police to handle, the military was sent out in order to control the masses. In general, the military has three missions; to defend its country, maintain security and order, and to maintain their own institutional interests. Militaries that were organized along institutionalized lines were less likely to shoot at citizens (such as in Egypt and Tunisia) than militaries organized along patrimonial lines and therefore are more invested in the survival of the regime (such as Syria, Bahrain, Libya, and Saudi Arabia). (Bellin 2012) As a result, the military in Egypt and Tunisia are more likely to see their regimes fall which is exactly what happened during the Arab Spring. Also, in Saudi Arabia levels of social mobilization were extremely low and so was access to social media and more liberal television compared to other countries, so therefore they were not able to meet the second condition that allowed for the Arab Springs to be more successful in all these other

Most of the time the fact that the opposition even exists - … – is denied, or those groups are referred to as kharab-kars – subversive activists, terrorists, and people who commit appalling acts in the name of politics. […] So despite the arrests, tortures, and the incessant

The example of this success is the result of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. (Ghannoushi, Aljazeera.) This peaceful revolution resulted into an effective transition between regimes that is now headed towards democratization, a feat that countries like Egypt and Syria could not achieve. According to a post on the Republic of Tunisia's government website, " the cabinet will continue to support the presidential initiative on the creation of a national unity government in line with the provision of the Constitution and continue the democratic process. " (June, 2016) This statement provided proof that a transition between regimes through a revolution is possible however for it to be effective, the body that will draft a new constitution was to be formed. (Abdelmoula, Aljazeera, 2015). In Contrary to Tunisia, The events that followed the fall of Hosni Mubarak lead Egypt to chaos. According to new data of autocratic breakdown and transitions, A professor from UCLA concluded that " Violence during transitions reduces prospects for democratization" (Geddes, 2011) which is exactly what happened to Egypt. If Egypt was to follow

President Bourguiba, Ben Ali’s predecessor, marked his reign—which lasted 30 years—with imposed “modernization” and complete disregard of Islamic principles like Ramadan and the hijab (Danahar, 2013, p. 44). Despite his title as president, Bourguiba failed to uphold democracy with the Tunisian one-party system. According to Paul Danahar in his book The New Middle East (2013), “when he [Bourguiba] was asked during the early years of independence about the country’s political system, he replied: ‘The system? What system? I am the system!’” (p. 44). After Ben Ali took Bourguiba’s place as president following his apparent (and formally declared) disintegration in 1987, he spoke of democratic reforms and the opening of the political system to other parties (Cavatorta & Haugbølle, 2012, p. 187; Danahar, 2013, p. 45). However, during his reign from 1987 up to the early protests following the Bouazizi’s act of desperation and ultimate death, Ben Ali failed to live up to his promises. Slow progress was made at the beginning, but democratic reforms halted quickly followed by excuses. First, Ben Ali claimed he could not implement excessive change too quickly “in order to avoid the problems that Algeria encountered in the same period” (Cavatorta & Haugbølle, 2012, p. 188). Later, his regime brushed aside postponements of more reforms with the excuse of the attack on September 11, 2001, asserting the issue of extremism infiltrating Tunisia and the democratic system if democratic reforms are implemented at the time (Cavatorta & Haugbølle, 2012, p. 188). Ben Ali’s failed to uphold his initial promises, and it was apparent. As a form of corruption, this failure resonated with the people of Tunisia, realizing that their president ran their country as a

Egypt’s political structure is considered an Arab Republic Democracy. However, its citizens tend to believe otherwise. Due to the immense amount of corruption and scandal in Egyptian politics, Egypt has been closely compared to a hierarchical pyramid of mafias. In this pyramid, power is gained through coercion and extortion. Those at the top, in charge of the country’s decision-making process, are likely the most politically corrupt and wealthy.

From Mubarak’s term lasting 29 years, elections in Egypt are pseudo-democratic. He and his party maintain their power by force but rationalize their rule with pseudo-democratic arguments. In the years 2005 and 2008, elections were held, but the party often nominated or approved only one candidate. In 80% of the contests, the NDP’s candidates ran unopposed. Moreover, the regime had cracked down hard on his opponents, so that it was difficult to register or campaign; this lack of opposition led to a low voter turnout which was estimated at only 3%. Nour experienced to evidence Mubarak’s political intimidation. He took part in the elections and strongly condemned Mubarak’s pseudo-democratic government; Mubarak created trumped-up charges against Nour so that his

In the wake of the second World War a new military coup was being swiftly formed in Egypt by a group of junior officers. It was called the Free Officers movement. Soon after its formation Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser as a result of a populist movement became their leader. According to the group they launched this movement “to put an end to that corruption, ineptitude and treason” (The modern middle east p.238) that was very apparent in the wake of the war and colonialism. As the military offices began to take control they had the tough task of having to weaken the grasp of the social elite on the rest of the population. The effects of the elite were largely seen by their actions in parliament. This was easily seen as the large landowners who are

In addition to opposing the political regime, the rise of fundamentalism in Egypt is due to the fact that ''[C]ertainly Egypt had many problems in the 1980s which might have conceivably strengthened radical Islamic groups'' (Rubin vii). The 1990s witnessed increase of terrorism in Egypt. This is

Moreover, instating the right to choose also facilitates the incentive for people to speak out against an unruly leader. When a large mass of civilians disagrees or is concerned with a party’s implementation of policies, they can extract their title from them. Just because a party is elected, does not mean that they will remain in power for the entire duration originally allotted to them. The presence of foreseeable change is crucial to a societies degree of satisfaction associated with their current governmental system. Alteration gives democracy the upper hand. For example, in Spain in 1982, when Prime Minister Leopolodo Calvo Sotelo completely terminated the party that supported what the people wanted, the people in office forcibly made him resign.