Feb 28, 2013
Posted by Gregory Aftandilian
After months of coddling Egyptian
President Morsi, even when he took blatantly
undemocratic actions, the Obama administration
has apparently reassessed its approach toward
Egypt and has decided to pressure him to pursue
democratic norms. Secretary Kerry is ideally
suited to carry this message to Morsi because
he is seen as a friend of Egypt, based on his
Senate record of resisting Congressional
attempts to cut assistance to Cairo. Kerry's
upcoming trip to Egypt (he arrives on March 2)
has been bolstered by President Obama's
February 26 phone call to Morsi in which the
U.S. President emphasized to his Egyptian
counterpart the need to protect democratic
principals. If Kerry sticks to these points, he
may help to shore up the poor U.S. standing
among Egyptian democratic activists. In order
for this policy to succeed, however, U.S.
policymakers need to resist the temptation to
allow regional goals to overshadow Egyptian
domestic concerns even while eliciting Egypt's
help in the pursuit of these
goals.
In the autumn
of 2012, the Obama administration did not take
a forceful stand against President Morsi's
actions that were sharply criticized by Egypt's
liberals and secularists. These actions
included Morsi's November 22 decree that
exempted his decisions from judicial review and
his desire to move ahead with a new
constitution that was largely drafted by his
Muslim Brotherhood allies and which opened
certain clauses to narrow religious
interpretations. These actions caused a
political firestorm in Egypt, and Morsi
responded by jailing some of his detractors,
particularly those in the press, using the
un-reformed interior ministry to crack down
violently on protestors, and even increasing
the use of torture against some dissidents. The
silence and only mild rebukes from Washington
to these actions were seen by the nearly the
entire Egyptian intelligentsia as a deliberate
policy by the Obama administration to stay in
the good graces of Morsi and the Brotherhood so
that the United States can continue to count on
Egypt's help with thorny regional problems,
like the occasional flare-ups between Hamas and
Israel, the latest of which took place that
autumn.
This real
politick approach, however, had its costs,
namely, a sharp decline of the U.S. standing in
the country. Prominent Egyptian human rights
activist Bahieddin Hassan, for example, wrote
an open letter to President Obama earlier this
month in which he accused him of giving cover
to the Morsi regime and "allowing it to
fearlessly implement undemocratic policies and
commit numerous acts of
repression."
U.S.
policymakers finally got the message and
started to reassess their position. U.S.
Ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, who was
reportedly an advocate of the soft approach to
Morsi and the Brotherhood, gave a speech in
Alexandria, Egypt last week in which she called
on the Egyptian leadership to develop a
"thicker skin" to domestic press criticism and
to drop suits against journalists, which she
described as "clearly harassment and a
distraction from the important work of the
media." President Obama, in his February 26
phone call with Morsi, reportedly emphasized
"President Morsi's responsibility to protect
the democratic principles that the Egyptian
people fought so hard to secure." Obama also
urged Morsi and all political groups in Egypt
"to try to build consensus and advance the
political transition." Meanwhile, Egyptian
officials have gotten wind that Kerry will be
tougher than his predecessor on Egypt's
internal affairs. According to an Egyptian
press report, Kerry will "want more in terms of
Egypt's domestic situation...Indeed, he won't
be as restrained in his reactions as Clinton
was regarding clashes between protestors and
police outside Egypt's presidential
palace."
According to
other press reports, Kerry plans to meet with
opposition politicians and civil society
activists in addition to Morsi and other
government officials. This is all for the good
but it comes at a delicate time. Morsi has
announced that parliamentary elections will
start in April (running over six weeks) but
much of the secular opposition, comprising a
fractured coalition group called the National
Salvation Front, has declared that it will
boycott the vote, alleging that Morsi is
forcing new elections rules on the country and
has no safeguards against vote-rigging. And a
prominent leader of this Front, Mohammed
El-Baradei, the former IAEA chairman, has even
suggested that the military should take over
again. He was quoted as saying, "If Egypt is on
the brink of default, if law and order is
absent, [the military] has a national duty to
intervene." This statement was then criticized
by other leaders of the Front who said that the
military should remain in the
barracks.
How Kerry
maneuvers in this political minefield will be a
challenge. He should inform Morsi that the
United States will be watching for clean and
transparent elections, free from from police
intimidation, vote buying and ballot stuffing
that have adversely affected Egyptian elections
in the past. He should also tell Morsi that, as
a friend of Egypt, continued U.S. largess will
be predicated on how the government conducts
itself in the months ahead. As for the
opposition, Kerry should tell them that
boycotting the vote will only lead to what they
fear--monopolization of power by the
Brotherhood. And he should tell them that the
United States will not turn a blind eye to
undemocratic measures by the Morsi government
before and during the elections, and will speak
out publicly and forcefully if such measures
occur.
All of this
comes at a time when regional issues will
continue to remain a top priority for the Obama
administration. For instance, Syria, Iran, and
the Israeli-Palestinian situation will all
require sustained U.S. attention and help from
Egyptian officials. But these regional issues
should not override the need to place the
Egyptian revolution on a democratic path.
Besides the moral imperative of supporting
democratic norms, the United States needs
buy-in not just from the Morsi administration
and the Egyptian military but from the Egyptian
people as well, and the only way to win their
support is to demonstrate, by words and deeds,
that Washington wants to help the Egyptian
political system to become more democratic and
for the Egyptian economy to become sustainable
and grow again. The apparent reassessment by
the Obama administration toward Egypt just in
the last couple of weeks is a good start. The
question remains if it can sustain this
attention to Egypt's democratic needs as it
grapples with equally pressing regional
issues.
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