Eideard

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Egyptians voted Monday in the first election since a popular revolt toppled Hosni Mubarak’s one-man rule, showing new-found faith in the ballot box that may sweep long-banned Islamists into parliament even as army generals cling to power…

The ruling army council, which has already extended polling to a second day, kept voting stations open an extra two hours until 9 p.m. “to accommodate the high voter turnout…”

Parliament’s lower house will be Egypt’s first nationally elected body since Mubarak’s fall and those credentials alone may enable it to dilute the military’s monopoly of power.

A high turnout throughout the election would give it legitimacy. Despite a host of reported electoral violations and lax supervision exploited by some groups, election monitors reported no systematic Mubarak-style campaign to rig the polls…

Oppressed under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties have stood aloof from those challenging army rule in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere, unwilling to let anything obstruct a vote that may bring them closer to power…

Nevertheless, the Brotherhood has formidable advantages that include a disciplined organization, name recognition among a welter of little-known parties and years of opposing Mubarak…

Many voters engaged in lively political debate as they waited patiently in long queues…

The world is closely watching the election, keen for stability in Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, owns the Suez Canal linking Europe and Asia, and which in Mubarak’s time was an ally in countering Islamist militants in the region…

Individual winners are to be announced Wednesday, but many contests will go to a run-off vote on December 5. List results will not be declared until after the election ends on January 11…

Egyptians seemed enthused by the novelty of a vote where the outcome was, for a change, not a foregone conclusion…

The army council has promised civilian rule by July after the parliamentary vote and a presidential poll, now expected in June — much sooner than previously envisaged.

It’s reasonable that many of those who fought to push Mubarak out the door are impatient about getting to a modern secular democracy. Perhaps they supported a boycott – as some did – because they felt the military was still too strong. Or perhaps they worried over their own inability to marshall an electoral struggle that would result in an appreciable voice in the new parliament. Not such a great reason.

As I’ve noted here in recent weeks, winning the revolution after the revolution is a lot more demanding than tearing down the walls of dictatorship. It may be less dangerous. It ain’t easier. The grunt work of building a democratic base is not only required – it’s how you guarantee democracy.

Meles Zenawi and Essam Sharaf
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Ethiopia and Egypt have agreed to review the impact of a planned $4.8 billion Nile river dam, which Addis Ababa announced in March, in a bid to open a “new chapter” in once-strained relations.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his Egyptian counterpart, Essam Sharaf, made the announcement at a joint news conference following talks in Cairo on Saturday. “We have agreed to quickly establish a tripartite team of technical experts to review the impact of the dam that is being built in Ethiopia,” Zenawi said. Experts from Sudan will also be part of the team.

Sharaf said Ethiopia’s planned construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam “could be a source of benefit” – an apparent change in tone by Egypt’s new rulers on what has been a highly contentious issue.

“We can make the issue of the Grand Renaissance Dam something useful,” Sharaf said. “This dam, in conjunction with the other dams, can be a path for development and construction between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt…”

Zenawi’s visit to Cairo was the first by an Ethiopian official since former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was ousted by a popular uprising in February…

The dam is planned for the Blue Nile river in northwestern Ethiopia, a few kilometres from the Ethiopia–Sudan border.

The dam is designed to have an installed capacity of 5250 MW, which is threefold of the 1885.8 MW installed capacity of the 12 currently operational hydro-power plants of the nation.

Bravo. It ain’t easy – it ain’t ever easy to negotiate treaties over natural resources especially water rights. Cripes, we’re still governed by water rights here in New Mexico that go back to Spanish colonial times. Technically, it’s against New Mexico law to collect rainwater after it falls from the skies — unless used by a farmer.

That these nations are willing to discuss and consider collaboration is a step forward.

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Judge Mahmoud Attiya

Egyptian voters overwhelmingly approved proposed constitutional amendments that pave the way for parliamentary elections in June, according to the head of the judicial committee overseeing the referendum.

“We are proud of the Egyptian people for deciding their own destiny,” Judge Mahmoud Attiya said Sunday. “We assure the world that the March 19 referendum was fair and transparent at all stages.”

Of the 18,366,764 ballots cast Saturday, there were 14,192,577 “yes” votes and 4,174,187 “no” votes, Atiya said…

The proposed amendments included limiting the president to two four-year terms, capping emergency laws to six months unless they are extended by public referendum, and placing elections under judicial oversight…

Presidential candidate and head of the Arab League Amre Moussa, who urged a “no” vote, lauded the referendum as “the first official step towards the democracy called for in the January 25 movements.”

“‘Yes’ or ‘no’ is not the issue — that Egyptians are participating and voting today is what’s important,” he said Saturday.

Attiya told CNN that the next step in the transition to a civilian government is for the military to move forward with parliamentary elections in June.

Hey – it’s a start.

One of the joys of a constitutional democracy is that there can be – hopefully, will be – opportunities for further discussion and referendums if needed. The essential point is that the Egyptian people have had a first chance at an election that wasn’t rigged by a despot.

Egypt’s interior minister has disbanded the country’s feared state security agency, which was accused of torture and human rights abuses during the 30-year rule of former president Hosni Mubarak.

Major General Mansour el-Essawy, a former Cairo security chief and the new interior minister, announced the dissolution of the security apparatus…He said a new agency in charge of keeping national security and combatting terrorism will be formed “in line with the constitution and principles of human rights”.

Officers for the new agency will be chosen in the coming few days, the statement said, adding that the new agency will “serve the country without intervening in the lives of citizens while they practice their rights and political life”…

The security branch, which was empowered to conduct emergency trials, was widely hated and its officers accused of committing torture.

The move was announced as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited the capital, Cairo in a bid to lend support to Egypt during its transition. Speaking at a joint news conference with the Egyptian foreign minister Nabil Elaraby during a visit to Cairo on Tuesday, Clinton welcomed the announcment.

RTFA. Overdue.

Think we’ll ever get round to the NSA and FBI?

As a democratic revolution led by tech-empowered young people sweeps the Arab world, Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera’s director-general, shares a profoundly optimistic view of what’s happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond.

In the first talk posted online from the TED 2011 conference in California, Khanfar describes the powerful moment when people realised they could step out of their homes and ask for change.

President Obama, Congress and the lamebrains in our wonderful world of news as entertainment – all say the waves of revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa came as a great surprise. If they watched AlJazeera – if it was allowed the same access to cable and satellite broadcasts as white-bread TV news – they would have been prepared, knowledgeable and not surprised in the least.

Knowledge and truth still aren’t leading commodities in American government or telecommunications.

Danger over – American politicians fly to Egypt for a photo op in Tahrir Square
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Hosni Mubarak’s resignation resurrected a tsunami wave of articles and commentaries on whether Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood would now come to power. And yet, few have asked why the primary leaders of grassroots revolt in Egypt and across the Arab world curiously have not been Islamic organizations.

Authoritarian rulers in the Arab world, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, have long justified their repressive governments by warning the United States and Europe that the alternative to their governments was “chaos” and an Islamist takeover.

The new generation of Arab youth and their supporters, however diverse and different, is united in its desire to topple entrenched autocrats and corrupt governments.

Having witnessed the failures of Islamist authoritarian regimes in Sudan, Iran, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, and the terror of the Bin Laden’s of the world, they are not interested in theocracy but democracy with its greater equality, pluralism, freedoms and opportunities.

But what about the Islamists, where are they?

The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups neither initiated nor have led pro-democracy protest movements. The uprisings have revealed a broad-based pro-democracy movement that is not driven by a single ideology or by religious extremists.

What has occurred is not an attempt at an Islamist takeover but a broad-based call for reforms…

As their signs, placards, statements, demands and the waving of flags not Islamist placards indicated, protesters want to reclaim their dignity, control of their lives and the right to determine their government; they demand government accountability and transparency, rule of law, an end to widespread corruption, and respect for human rights…

In contrast to radical extremists who want to seize power and impose their brand of an Islamic state, mainstream Islamic groups have competed and done well in elections and remained non-violent despite government limitations, harassment, repression, and rigged elections.

They have created effective NGOs that respond to the social and educational needs of their societies. They have come to appreciate diversity and pluralism in society and the need for democracy as the best system to manage this diversity. They have also been advocating many of the values of democracy, such as citizenship, rule of law, constitutionalism, separation of power, good governance and accountability…

I’m not certain how much of this analysis is wishful thinking by John Esposito. Certainly the currents he describes as mainstream, even predominant, have always been a force in the resistance to old-line dictators. Especially to the autocrats so often favored by the US and UK.

I hope he’s right. RTFA for the details. He does have significantly more knowledge of the turf than your average politician or pundit.

Switzerland may soon be as famous for its haste at freezing shady money as for its zeal for looking after it.

After blocking bank accounts of the deposed Tunisian and Egyptian presidents, the country has done the same with what it calls the “possible assets” of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, whose family fortune, according to the wildest estimates, may be in the tens of billions of dollars.

But the problem of corrupt dictators isn’t new, and would be better addressed ahead of time. It’s nice to freeze the money. It would have been better not to accept it.

Doing so is not as tricky as it sounds. Banks and governments have the financial and legal tools to clamp down on dictators’ looting of their countries’ resources even while they’re still deemed legitimate leaders…

Those rules, agreed by all countries that are part of an international body called the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), impose a duty on banks to investigate whenever they suspect unusual financial activity by a political leader with past or present responsibilities. But in the case of sitting leaders, it seems that banks haven’t been looking very hard…

Another serious problem is international politics. It’s easy enough to freeze out discredited regimes like North Korea and Iran. But it would have been harder for, say, a French or Italian bank to treat Gaddafi as a pariah when he was setting up his tent in Rome or Paris before shaking hands with those countries’ leaders…

As long as western banks and governments deliberately look the other way and accept cash in the name of raison d’etat, there’s little hope the looting will stop. But if they really wanted to change, they could start by applying the existing rules.

They all should be filling out SAR’s [Significant Activity Reports] at a minimum. Keeping their government apprised of what appears to be suspicious funds entering the country’s banking system,

I don’t agree 100% with Pierre Briançon’s editorial. I’d rather see the money come in the door exactly so that it may be frozen when circumstances require it. Otherwise, who knows where it may be?

David Cameron in Tahrir Square
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

David Cameron has met Egypt’s new leaders, as the first world leader to visit the country since President Hosni Mubarak was forced out of office.

The UK prime minister held talks with the head of the armed forces supreme council Mohamed Tantawi and caretaker Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. He said Egypt had a “great opportunity” to push for democracy.

Mr Cameron also described the violent suppression of protests in neighbouring Libya as “appalling”…

Speaking on the flight to Cairo, Mr Cameron said: “This is a great opportunity for us to go and talk to those currently running Egypt to make sure this really is a genuine transition from military rule to civilian rule, and see what friendly countries like Britain and others in Europe can do to help.”

Part of the prime minister’s agenda will be a call for the lifting of emergency laws, which have been in place for more than 30 years.

After walking through Tahrir Square, Mr Cameron also met figures from the protest movement, although not representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood – the banned Islamic group which is thought to have widespread public support…

He told the BBC that Egypt’s current military rulers had done some good things in terms of setting out the need for constitutional change, a referendum and parliamentary elections.

But he said they need to “do more, more quickly in terms of ending the state of emergency, allowing political parties to register and freeing political prisoners”.

Mr Cameron said he had met “very brave” figures from the protest movement who “don’t yet have confidence that this transition is real”.

“As a friend of Egypt we want this transition to happen we want to help encourage the government to take those steps,” he said.

Meanwhile, the self-assigned world leader in the struggle for democracy – you know, the USA – continues to send emails and phone calls encouraging everyone in Egypt to continue their struggle.

I’m confident of that. Pretty much.

“I tell you, you really had me scared there for a moment!”
(How it could have ended, if only…)

I just figured it out. Mubarak could have won over the masses if only he had had the good sense to open a Twitter account:

7:30 am
Just had breakfast. It was ok, but probably not as good as you get at home. Please don’t believe everything you hear. Everything I eat is brought to me, and you know that nobody fixes for other people with the same care as if they are cooking for themselves.

8:15 am
Just received a letter from Obama. It sounds almost like a threat. You people think you have it rough. Imagine being me.

8:45 am
I just received a call from Hillary Clinton. They ARE threatening me. At least that’s how I take it. NOW do you believe that I am the unlucky one?

10:30 am
Had a nap. Refreshed now. How are you all doing? How I wish I could be in the streets with you. I miss you all.

12 noon
Some of you have written me some nice messages. I appreciate that. You have been able to see my predicament. I never wanted to be a leader. I wanted to be a simple carpenter. I always liked working with tools.

1:00 pm
I can hardly believe my good fortune. Many many people are writing me kind messages and encouragements, and I realize now that opening a Twitter account is one of the best things I ever did.

2:30 pm
My military informs me that the crowds are beginning to disperse. People are starting to spread the word that I am not such a bad guy. I have tears in my eyes as I type this.

3:00 pm
My military tells me that the palace is easy and quiet now, and that I would probably be greeted with cheers if I ventured out. I want to believe them. I do know that you have all been very kind since I opened my Twitter account this morning.

4:30 pm
Back inside. I did it. I got up the courage to go out and meet you, my people. I didn’t expect to be hoisted upon shoulders with cheers of “We love you!”, but that is precisely what happened.

6:00 pm
CNN is now reporting that the Egyptian people now feel that this has all been a terrible misunderstanding. Things are changed, and everything is returning to normal. I guess that the internet does have a place after all. I promise to send out Tweets every day. I never knew that it would mean so much to you.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood will apply to become a political party…

The Brotherhood “envisions the establishment of a democratic, civil state that draws on universal measures of freedom and justice, with central Islamic values serving all Egyptians regardless of colour, creed, political trend or religion,” it said in the statement.

Although officially illegal, the Muslim Brotherhood is regarded as one of the most organized groups in Egypt.
It has said it does not plan to run a candidate for president when elections are held to replace Hosni Mubarak, who resigned on Friday.

This drags out all the bogeymen feared by the range of Blue Dog Democowards to KoolAid Party Bigots and old-fashioned haters of democracy in power in the Republican Party.

Americans have a special talent for embracing a sound political philosophy while doing everything they can to defeat it at home – and prevent it abroad. Right now, with a tentative schedule of transition from military to civilian government by August in Egypt – and elections in September – we may as well settle down for weeks and months of panicstricken pundits calling for our favorite Israeli dogs of war to bomb Egypt “back into the Stone Age”.