This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 14, 2012 - WASHINGTON – As Egypt’s government and the Muslim Brotherhood try to engineer the approval of an Islamist-backed constitution, U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt is calling for “a healthy discussion” of whether U.S. aid to Egypt should be reassessed.
“The Arab Spring . . . has gone from one person enforcing their will on [Egypt] to another person or group imposing their will,” Blunt, R-Mo., told reporters Thursday. He said Egypt is “putting its relationship with the U.S. – militarily and financially and aid-wise – in jeopardy. And I’m concerned about it.”
The comments from Blunt, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, came as Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamist backers pushed to avoid a potential boycott of the controversial referendum – scheduled to start Saturday in Cairo and end on Dec. 22 in the country's rural areas.
While some opposition groups have threatened a boycott, St. Louis University assistant professor Morris Kalliny – an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian who is in Cairo this week to speak at a conference and conduct research – said many Egyptians are pessimistic about the vote’s outcome as well as the potential for election fraud.
“They would like [the constitutional referendum] to lose so they might have a chance to go back and engage the country in a debate” that might lead to improvements, Kalliny said in a telephone interview Thursday.
“No one really knows what the [vote] outcome will be. However, the opposition is very concerned that the voting process is, for sure, going to be compromised,” Kalliny told the Beacon.
He said the government and Muslim Brotherhood want the constitution to pass “because it would put them in a very strong position” to consolidate their power.
Update This weekend, the government said Egyptians voted in favor of the constitutional referendum by a relatively narrow margin. They predicted that next week's second round of voting, held in regions that tend to me more sympathetic to Islamists, would also produce a majority and that the constitution would be approved. End update
That potential for vote fraud was heightened by the chaos in Egypt’s judiciary system, experts say. Typically, judges supervise ballot boxes during elections and referendums. But some judicial organizations have sided with the political opposition and say they will refuse to supervise the vote – making legal challenges likely after the referendum.
The tension between Morsi’s Islamist backers and the mostly secular political opposition had worsened last month when the Egyptian president issued a decree that expanded his powers in a way that some charged would have made him a dictator. But, facing violent protests, Morsi on Sunday rescinded much of the decree – including his plan to buffer the presidential office from judicial oversight.
While that move helped cool down some protesters, the divide that has opened between Egypt’s opposition and the Islamist leadership is threatening to worsen as a result of dissatisfaction with the proposed new constitution, which was drafted by an assembly dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist factions.
“Egyptians feel that they’ve paid a very high price for very little outcome,” observed Kalliny. “Egypt now seems to be split in half. It’s not been polarized like this before. It’s in the minds of everyone. Many of the people are very scared right now.”
Opposition solidifies, some question U.S. policy
As the Egyptian opposition discussed whether it would be better to urge backers to vote “no” or simply to boycott the constitution referendum, there were rumblings among some government critics about the lack of U.S. response.
Arguing that “the response from Washington has bordered on the absurd,” Cairo-based journalist Issandr El Amrani told NPR on Thursday that U.S. calls for “inclusiveness” in the Egyptian constitution make no sense because “it clearly wasn't inclusive and the president is insisting on a referendum. Why are they thinking it's going to make things more inclusive?”
El Amrani, who writes an influential blog called the Arabist, said some Egyptians fear that “we're seeing a repeat of the patterns from the U.S., but also from the European Union, for instance, of silence about abuses by the regime, just like under (deposed President Hosni) Mubarak.”
In Washington, Blunt and others in Congress concerned about trends in Egypt and are calling for a discussion of U.S. aid to Egypt – which averages at about $2 billion a year – if present trends worsen. A survey last summer found that 42 percent of Americans supported reducing aid to Egypt, while 29 percent supported cutting it off altogether.
“We have lots of ways to impact Israel, Egypt and their relationship and the whole Middle East,” Blunt said. “And we should use those, starting with a healthy discussion of U.S. aid to Egypt if Egypt is not going to conduct itself in a way that’s helpful to peace in the (Middle East) and more democracy in Egypt.”
Blunt said it was “interesting that Morsi stepped in to be a positive force, hopefully, in what was happening between Israel and Gaza. But then (he) immediately tried to take advantage of that good will by thinking that you could end the (Egyptian) movement toward democracy in such a dramatic way by saying the president will just decide everything that needs to be decided.”
That, Blunt asserted, amounted to “trading one kind of totalitarian view of how to run a country for another.” However, he said it appeared that “Morsi has been surprised by the dramatic pushback from the country. And the country has probably been surprised by the brutal response that their pushback has received.”
In his discussion with NPR, El Amrani argued that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have lost considerable public support and won’t be able to regain it even if the constitutional referendum is approved. “The crisis will not be ended by the referendum, there's just too much resistance to that,” he said, adding that “the Muslim Brothers have lost a lot of their status and tentative trust that was put in them, even by non-Islamists.
“It's important to remember that this isn't simply an Islamist versus secularist divide. At the core of the debate is a distrust, including by very conservative pious Muslims in Egypt, of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Contending that Egypt’s future “hangs in the balance,” journalist Steve Coll wrote this week in The New Yorker that “the Brotherhood’s decision to jam through a constitution has coincided with other disturbing acts. Egyptian editors and broadcasting executives complain that the Brotherhood’s censorship practices are now worse than those of” Mubarak. “Morsi has also sought to usurp the judiciary by decree, although he partially backed down.”
While there is some validity to the Brotherhood’s claim that “holdovers from the Mubarak machine” in the judiciary and media want to undermine their electoral mandate, Coll wrote that “the Brotherhood’s explanations increasingly sound tinged with paranoia and authoritarian arrogance – and the movement has dispatched violent cadres to beat up peaceful opposition protesters.”
SLU expert worries about mixing religion, politics
Kalliny, an expert on the social and economic impact of the internet, satellite television and cellphones on the Arab-speaking world, is in Cairo this week to speak at a conference and to conduct demographic research related to the role of religion and culture in consumer preferences.
“I’m trying to understand what’s taking place in Egypt, especially in light of the religious revival,” he told the Beacon. Egypt has a population of about 84 million, of which about 50 million are eligible to vote. Approximately 43 percent of the people live in urban areas, led by Cairo and Alexandria.
“Right now, you have 4 million to 5 million people who are very hard-core Islamists, and a very large number of people who don’t know how to read and write and who often look to their religious leaders for advice. But these people are not the ones who are going to go out on the street and fight for the government." (About 30 percent of Egyptians are illiterate.)
“And then you have the hard core [opposition], who are also Muslims but are highly educated and have Western ideas such as separation of church and state. They don’t want religion and politics to mix because they fear it would lead to problems that would be difficult to resolve.”
Also caught up in the problems is Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, officially about 10 percent of the population but probably a higher percentage. Kalliny has said the number of attacks on Coptic Christians had increased under the Morsi regime.
Kalliny said one moderate Egyptian told him that “his biggest concern was that the country was being forced to accept a constitution that won’t accomplish what the revolution was about. He feels the country won’t be able to move forward the way they were hoping it would, both in the economy and society.”
A widespread concern that Kalliny found among Egyptians is a fear for their personal safety. “Previously in Egypt, you always felt secure. You wouldn’t think twice about going out and buying a few things at the grocery store and leave your child at home for a little while. That has changed for the worse.”
Kalliny said the presidential palace in Cairo is surrounded by tanks and barricades and “there are soldiers everywhere around the palace. But the rest of the country seems to be pretty functional.” The biggest change isn’t in the surroundings but rather “in the minds of the people. They are apprehensive and many are very disappointed.”
In Thursday's discussion, Blunt told reporters that some U.S. lawmakers are concerned that “the Muslim Brotherhood and others appear to see democracy as the way to get where they want to go – and where they want to go does not appear to me to be democracy, but more control of the society in a way that forces that society to conform to what their view of the religious world is.”
Blunt added: “I think it’s a huge problem. I’m surprised that Morsi made this reach" for more power. "I’m actually encouraged that there seems to be such a backlash against him in Egypt.
“But if you notice what’s going on in Egypt, the police and the military are responding as they would – and maybe even more vigorously than they were – when Mubarak was in control.”