Jonathan Schanzer: The Answer to Egypt’s Problems?
[Jonathan Schanzer is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Khairi Abaza is a senior fellow at FDD, and a former Wafd Party official.]
President Mubarak’s government may soon collapse. Popular support for him has evaporated, and while the Obama administration has declined to officially take sides in the Egyptian protests, it is clearly looking toward some sort of endgame. But what form would such a transition take? Oddly, the most obvious possibility is a plan that has, in its broad contours, been around since the mid-1980s.
In September 1980, Turkey’s government was overthrown in a military coup, but the military cooperated with interim civilian leaders and ultimately presided over a peaceful democratic transition that included the creation of a new constitution in 1982 and elections in 1983. This example inspired members of Egypt’s nationalistic, business-oriented Wafd Party, which was resurrected—after disappearing in 1952—at about the same time. So in 1984, a plan based on Turkey’s experience was drawn up and presented by Ibrahim Abaza, a member of the executive bureau (and the father of one of this article’s authors), Yusuf Hamed Zaki, a member of the party’s high committee, and a handful of others. It envisioned a military-backed caretaker government that could maintain order on the streets, create a safe political space, and then guide the nation into representative governance. While Egyptian newspapers debated the merits of the plan, the Mubarak regime, which had been in power for only a few years, ignored it. Similarly, several successive U.S. presidential administrations listened politely, but opted not to pressure their allies in Cairo.
Now, former International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohammed ElBaradei and his followers are demanding a series of reforms that track closely along these lines. As ElBaradei explained to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, “the next step … as everybody now agrees on, is a transitional period” followed by “a government of national salvation, of national unity” that would “prepare the grounds for a new constitution and free and fair elections” while the “army will be able to control the situation.”
Read entire article at The New Republic
President Mubarak’s government may soon collapse. Popular support for him has evaporated, and while the Obama administration has declined to officially take sides in the Egyptian protests, it is clearly looking toward some sort of endgame. But what form would such a transition take? Oddly, the most obvious possibility is a plan that has, in its broad contours, been around since the mid-1980s.
In September 1980, Turkey’s government was overthrown in a military coup, but the military cooperated with interim civilian leaders and ultimately presided over a peaceful democratic transition that included the creation of a new constitution in 1982 and elections in 1983. This example inspired members of Egypt’s nationalistic, business-oriented Wafd Party, which was resurrected—after disappearing in 1952—at about the same time. So in 1984, a plan based on Turkey’s experience was drawn up and presented by Ibrahim Abaza, a member of the executive bureau (and the father of one of this article’s authors), Yusuf Hamed Zaki, a member of the party’s high committee, and a handful of others. It envisioned a military-backed caretaker government that could maintain order on the streets, create a safe political space, and then guide the nation into representative governance. While Egyptian newspapers debated the merits of the plan, the Mubarak regime, which had been in power for only a few years, ignored it. Similarly, several successive U.S. presidential administrations listened politely, but opted not to pressure their allies in Cairo.
Now, former International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohammed ElBaradei and his followers are demanding a series of reforms that track closely along these lines. As ElBaradei explained to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, “the next step … as everybody now agrees on, is a transitional period” followed by “a government of national salvation, of national unity” that would “prepare the grounds for a new constitution and free and fair elections” while the “army will be able to control the situation.”