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ITALIAN MEP URGES WEST TO KEEP UP POSTELECTION PRESSURE ON EGYPT, AFGHANISTAN
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The interview has been published by Il Corriere della Sera on September 10, 2005
Cairo. Emma Bonino knows Egypt well, as she has had a home there for years and has been taking a passionate interest in the major Arab country's laborious advance in the direction of democratization. However, she was not in Cairo, as she would have wished, for Wednesday's first-ever presidential election with several candidates. The Radical member of the European Parliament, formerly EU commmissioner for humanitarian aid, is currently in Afghanistan as leader of the delegation of European observers in the approach to the 18 September parliamentary and provincial elections. We called her on the phone.
So is this poll in Egypt really "historic"? Mubarak [Husni, returned Egyptian president] has won a landslide victory, and many people are denouncing rigging.
I take the view that "democracy" is a process, and that there are historical stages in every country in which "the process" is almost more important than the immediate outcome. From that point of view, I believe that the Egyptian election has been a "historic", albeit not a totally democratic event, as the foreign media and local observers have demonstrated in full. However, the elements of historic change in this poll will lose all meaning unless the government and the Egyptians move on rapidly and convincingly towards further horizons. If it is truly to go down in history, Egypt must put real mechanisms in place to cut down on fraud right from the next parliamentary election, in November.
Almost everybody in Cairo is saying that democratization is now unstoppable. Do you not agree?
There is nothing automatic or unstoppable about these processes anywhere. Only determination and constant vigilance on the part of the public, the political leaders, and the international community will ensure that the process does not peter out.
Do you fear a clampdown by the leader?
It really strikes me as too late in the day: Too many floodlights have been switched on, at home and abroad. And leaving aside very many people's anger at the vote rigging, unprecedented, even unhoped-for developments have taken place in Egypt of late: electoral rallies that have generally not been quashed, open press criticism of the leader in person, and even a reawakening of the Egyptian intelligentsia, which has long been torpid.
What will the next test be, apart from the parliamentary elections in two months' time?
Seeing whether Mubarak will feel "pledged/forced" to honour the promises on reforms, commencing with that of the emergency laws that ban the bulk of political activity; whether the judges will continue their struggle for autonomy; whether Ayman Nur (who came second in the presidential poll and was accused of fraud early in the year - Corriere della Sera editor's note) will get a trial seen to be fair, and whether we ourselves make it clear that the past elections [word(s) omitted?] only as the first of further positive steps in the direction of a genuine democratic system.
Might it not be that loosening up will lead to the emergence of radical Islamic forces in Egypt?
I do not think so at all: Like in Afghanistan, I am seeing by the day that no one looks to Islamic theocracy as a model any more, if they ever did. I was in Kandahar, the Taleban headquarters from 1996 to 2001, yesterday, and in none of the candidates I met, of whatever persuasion, did I see nostalgia for that system and that period. The women candidates in particular struck me as so determined. If I look at this snapshot of present-day Afghanistan and recall the one for 1997... I am moved to think what change can come about in such a short time.
Do you not fear backsliding in Afghanistan as well?
If the international community and we Europeans do not keep up our determined, strict backing, everything can revert to chaos, not least under the influence of Pakistan and Iran. But, as Saudi Prince Talal wrote a few days ago, political reform is the antidote to chaos in the Middle East, the only one possible, not the road to chaos that many people, in our countries and theirs, claim.
What is the next engagement in your diary?
The event on which I have been working with the "There Is No Peace Without Justice" NGO [nongovernmental organization] for months: a major governmental and nongovernmental conference on political processes and scope for democracy, which is to be held in Morocco in early October under the auspices of Italy, Turkey, and Yemen. It will not have sexy, headline-grabbing features, but I hope [Foreign, Deputy Prime] Minister [Gianfranco] Fini will not miss the event and that everybody will realize at last that the "processes" play a crucial, maybe not sensational, but indispensable building role.
Cairo. Emma Bonino knows Egypt well, as she has had a home there for years and has been taking a passionate interest in the major Arab country's laborious advance in the direction of democratization. However, she was not in Cairo, as she would have wished, for Wednesday's first-ever presidential election with several candidates. The Radical member of the European Parliament, formerly EU commmissioner for humanitarian aid, is currently in Afghanistan as leader of the delegation of European observers in the approach to the 18 September parliamentary and provincial elections. We called her on the phone.
So is this poll in Egypt really "historic"? Mubarak [Husni, returned Egyptian president] has won a landslide victory, and many people are denouncing rigging.
I take the view that "democracy" is a process, and that there are historical stages in every country in which "the process" is almost more important than the immediate outcome. From that point of view, I believe that the Egyptian election has been a "historic", albeit not a totally democratic event, as the foreign media and local observers have demonstrated in full. However, the elements of historic change in this poll will lose all meaning unless the government and the Egyptians move on rapidly and convincingly towards further horizons. If it is truly to go down in history, Egypt must put real mechanisms in place to cut down on fraud right from the next parliamentary election, in November.
Almost everybody in Cairo is saying that democratization is now unstoppable. Do you not agree?
There is nothing automatic or unstoppable about these processes anywhere. Only determination and constant vigilance on the part of the public, the political leaders, and the international community will ensure that the process does not peter out.
Do you fear a clampdown by the leader?
It really strikes me as too late in the day: Too many floodlights have been switched on, at home and abroad. And leaving aside very many people's anger at the vote rigging, unprecedented, even unhoped-for developments have taken place in Egypt of late: electoral rallies that have generally not been quashed, open press criticism of the leader in person, and even a reawakening of the Egyptian intelligentsia, which has long been torpid.
What will the next test be, apart from the parliamentary elections in two months' time?
Seeing whether Mubarak will feel "pledged/forced" to honour the promises on reforms, commencing with that of the emergency laws that ban the bulk of political activity; whether the judges will continue their struggle for autonomy; whether Ayman Nur (who came second in the presidential poll and was accused of fraud early in the year - Corriere della Sera editor's note) will get a trial seen to be fair, and whether we ourselves make it clear that the past elections [word(s) omitted?] only as the first of further positive steps in the direction of a genuine democratic system.
Might it not be that loosening up will lead to the emergence of radical Islamic forces in Egypt?
I do not think so at all: Like in Afghanistan, I am seeing by the day that no one looks to Islamic theocracy as a model any more, if they ever did. I was in Kandahar, the Taleban headquarters from 1996 to 2001, yesterday, and in none of the candidates I met, of whatever persuasion, did I see nostalgia for that system and that period. The women candidates in particular struck me as so determined. If I look at this snapshot of present-day Afghanistan and recall the one for 1997... I am moved to think what change can come about in such a short time.
Do you not fear backsliding in Afghanistan as well?
If the international community and we Europeans do not keep up our determined, strict backing, everything can revert to chaos, not least under the influence of Pakistan and Iran. But, as Saudi Prince Talal wrote a few days ago, political reform is the antidote to chaos in the Middle East, the only one possible, not the road to chaos that many people, in our countries and theirs, claim.
What is the next engagement in your diary?
The event on which I have been working with the "There Is No Peace Without Justice" NGO [nongovernmental organization] for months: a major governmental and nongovernmental conference on political processes and scope for democracy, which is to be held in Morocco in early October under the auspices of Italy, Turkey, and Yemen. It will not have sexy, headline-grabbing features, but I hope [Foreign, Deputy Prime] Minister [Gianfranco] Fini will not miss the event and that everybody will realize at last that the "processes" play a crucial, maybe not sensational, but indispensable building role.
