In this way the dictator becomes completely isolated from reality until one day he wakes up when disaster befalls the country or a revolution overthrows him. ‘Dictator’s solitude’ is a phenomenon that recurs When Will President Mubarak Grasp This Truth? 37 through history and it is one of the worst defects of an autocratic system. When the French revolution broke out in 1789 and mobs, angry and hungry, surrounded the palace of Versailles, Queen Marie Antoinette of France allegedly asked why they were demonstrating. When one of her aides told her they were angry because they could not find bread, the queen is said to have replied in surprise: “Let them eat cake.” This famous remark attributed to Marie Antoinette shows how isolated an autocratic ruler can become. Marie Antoinette was a strong and intelligent woman and in fact was the real power behind the decisions taken by her husband, King Louis XVI, but after years of autocracy she was living in a different and remote world.
I thought about this while following what was happening in Egypt when President Mubarak went to have surgery in Germany. Of course I wish everyone who is sick a speedy recovery but I do not think that the president’s illness is particularly special. Everyone falls ill and the president’s advanced age is bound to bring some health problems from time to time. But the regime’s scribes treated the president’s illness as though it were the end of the world and some of them even wrote that the country itself had fallen ill with the same disease, as if President Mubarak was the incarnation and embodiment of all Egypt. This cheap and disgraceful sycophancy continued throughout the time he was under treatment, and when the surgery was successful and President Mubarak came back to Egypt, the sycophants let loose with their chorus of pipes and drums. Some singers received orders to compose songs specifically to celebrate the president’s auspicious return. I don’t know how any real artist could allow himself to sing eulogies for a fee, like those beggars who go around the annual festivals of popular holy men. Have these sycophants thought what they will do when the president goes to Germany again for further treatment? Will they compose new songs for when he returns? Does President Mubarak believe this flattery? Does it ever occur to him, even for a moment, that these pipers and drummers don’t like him, but are merely defending the privileges they have acquired under his rule? Doesn’t President Mubarak realize that these sycophants have always clung to those in power and have shaped their own ideas and opinions to be in tune with the ruler? They were loyal socialists in the time of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, but when the wind changed and the state turned to the market economy they become some of the prime advocates of privatization and the free market.
What conception of what is happening in Egypt does President Mubarak have? Does he know that more than half of all Egyptians live below the poverty line? Does it bother the president that millions of Egyptians live in shantytowns without water, electricity, or a sewage system? Is he upset at the prevalence of unemployment, poverty, disease, and frustration? Does President Mubarak know that Egypt has hit rock bottom in many fields? Has he heard about the poor people who die standing in line to obtain bread or cooking gas? Has he heard of the death boats on which thousands of young Egyptians embark to escape misery, only to drown on the high seas? Has anyone told the president that for months thousands of civil servants and their children have been lying on the pavement in front of parliament because their lives are no longer tolerable? Has President Mubarak thought about civil servants who support a whole family on a salary of 100 Egyptian pounds ($18) a month when the price of meat has risen to 70 pounds a kilo? Of course I don’t know how President Mubarak thinks, though I imagine, based on the theory of ‘dictator’s solitude,’ that his conceptions are completely detached from the reality of what is happening in Egypt. The reality is liable to produce an explosion at any moment, and if that explosion takes place, God forbid, we will all pay a heavy price. I hope President Mubarak ends his many years in office by carrying out real democratic reform, amending the constitution to allow for honest competition between candidates and for free and fair elections so that Egyptians can choose new faces—people who are respected and willing to take responsibility for ending the ordeal Egypt has been through and to begin a new future. When will President Mubarak grasp this truth?
Democracy is the solution.
April 6, 2010
Does Rigging Elections Count
as a Major Sin?
Over the coming eighteen months or so Egypt will have parliamentary and then presidential elections. In the past the Egyptian regime has tried to use judges to conceal election rigging, but upright judges refused to betray their principles and their message was clear: “Either we supervise the elections seriously and scrupulously, or we’ll withdraw and let the regime alone take responsibility for the fraud.” This time the regime has decided from the start to abolish judicial supervision and has announced that it will not allow any international monitoring of the voting. All this confirms that the next elections will be rigged. Even now Egyptians are well aware that members of the ruling party will win the majority of seats in parliament and that the presidential elections next year will be a farce through which President Mubarak will either hang on to power or bequeath it to his son, Gamal.
The question here is: Who is responsible for rigging elections? The Ministry of Interior is the authority that supervises the conduct of elections and so is responsible for rigging them, but in fact the interior minister is no more than carrying out orders. The person who takes the decision to rig elections is the president himself, and so the decision to rig is conveyed from the president to the interior minister and is then implemented by thousands of police officers and civil servants across the country. These are the people who prevent people from voting, call in thugs to beat up voters who don’t belong to the ruling party, fill in unused ballot papers, close the ballot boxes, and then announce fabricated election results. These fraudsters, like most Egyptians these days, are conscientious about performing their prayers, fasting in Ramadan, giving alms, and going on pilgrimage, and they ask their wives and daughters to wear the hijab. Although they are meticulous about these religious obligations, they take part in election rigging and do not in the least feel they are committing a religious sin. They are not kept awake at night by any feelings of guilt. Generally they consider themselves merely to be carrying out the orders of their bosses, as though they see the whole question of elections as unconnected with religion.
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