A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt JASON BROWNLEE Assistant Professor University of Texas at Austin "THE GREAT AND PROUD NATION of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East, and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East."' With this injunction, U.S. President Ceorge W. Bush sought to catalyze political reform in the region's most populous state. But his bold declaration has elicited the same kinds of faux liberalization that have characterized Egyptian President Hosn) Mubarak's quar- ter-century in power. While allowing a patina of competitive politics to validate the United States' hopes, Mubarak has also confirmed his critics' worst fears. Constitutional amendments in May 2005, followed by presidential and parliamentary elections that fall, benefited Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) and exposed his opponents to state-sanctioned repression. This past spring, the regime further entrenched itself, deploying a second round of amendments that doomed any chance for vibrant multi- partyism under the current president or his successor. The Egyptian elite has thus turned Bush's call on its head, embracing the mantle of reform only to enshrine its dominance beyond Hosni Mubarak's passing. Rather than blazing a new path to democracy, Egypt has embarked on the road to political dynasty recently traversed by the Assads in Syria and the Aliyevs in Azerbaijan. The lopsided battle over constitutional changes thereby signifies the Egyptian government's success at regenerating authoritarianism while again suppressing its critics. This essay recounts the latest arc of liberalization and repression. It also addresses the reasons why hereditary succession may command the tacit support of most Egyp- tian leaders, focusing on the "transitional period" of the past two years, during which autocratic rule has been rejuvenated without being reformed.' JASON BROWNLEE is an assistant professor of government at the University ofTexas at Austin and a regular visitor to Egypt. His research on democratization and Middle East politics has appeared in Studies in Comparative International Development and ^orld Politics. He is the author oi Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. The author thanks Joshua Stacher for helpful comments on a prior version of this work. This article went to press prior to the NDP's ninth general congress, scheduled for November 2007. Copyright © 2007 by the Bnytvn Journal ofWorld Affairs FALL/WINTER 2007 • VOLUME XIV, ISSUE 1 JASON BROWNLEE THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND CONTESTED ELECTIONS OF 2005 When Bush reiterated his call for Egyptian reform in the 2005 State of the Union address, Mubarak appeared to respond. Mubarak's four six-year terms in power had been approved through uncontested referenda, as had the tenures of his predecessors. On 26 February 2005 the septuagenarian president proposed amending Egypt's constitution to replace these single-candidate plebiscites with multi-candidate presidential elections. But the measure, ratified by a violence-ridden referendum on 25 May 2005, did not deliver the political sea change initially promised.^ As the fate of Mubarak's strongest challenger soon demonstrated, the amendment was carefully managed to foil genuine competition. In the multi-candidate presidential polls that September, twice-elected member of parliament Ayman Nour finished second with 7.6 percent ofthe national vote to Mubarak's unassailable 88.6 percent."* This relatively strong showing solidified Nours status as the leading oppositionist outside the contraband but active Muslim Brotherhood (widely regarded as Egypt's most viable opposition movement yet prohibited from joining the presidential race). Nours success only intensified the problems already plaguing him and his party, Al Ghad (Tomorrow). He was harassed by state security and then robbed of his seat in parliament through electoral chicanery.' His dubious defeat in the opening rounds 74 of parliamentary polls on 9 November 2005 supported suspicions that Nour was the victim of an organized government campaign. On 24 December, a regime-friendly judge convicted Nour on orchestrated forgery charges and sentenced the erstwhile presidential contender to five years of imprisonment, a telling capstone to Mubarak's year of reform.^ Even as parliamentary elections spelled the beginning of Nour's downfoll, the same set of polls appeared to buoy the Muslim Brotherhood, which won 88 seats—more than quintupling the group's presence from the prior legislative elections in the year 2000. The Brotherhoods unprecedented capture of 20 percent ofthe People's Assembly enlivened the group's supporters and disconcerted its critics. As was with Ayman Nour's candidacy in the preceding presidential elections, the Brotherhood s victories constituted not an irreversible advance for the opposition, but a gain the regime could neutral- ize after accruing credit for its alleged reform. Numeric success concealed qualitative setbacks, as official and plain-clothed government targeted the Muslim Brotherhood s leadership for defeat. The head ofthe group's parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Morsi, lost his post amid state-sponsored intervention; anti-corruption champion Gamal Heshmat was deprived a seat amid similar conditions. Brotherhood candidates who surmounted electoral subterfuge composed a vocal parliamentary presence, only to find their legislative initiatives derailed by Mubarak's ministers and the solid supermajority still held by the ruling NDP7 Thus the Brotherhood's expanded bloc commanded no THE BROWN JOURNAL OF WORLD AFFAIRS A New Generation of Autocracy in Egypt measurably greater influence over legislation than its previous cohort. On balance, the 88 parliamentarians* first full year in office seemed a symbolic measure to placate U.S. foreign policy makers and ward off subsequent pressure.^ If this was Mubarak's ploy, it worked; abandoning her earlier tone of criticism, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was noticeably upbeat about local developments during her visits to Cairo in 2006 and 2007.'' Urban Cairo PHoro courtesy oi [)jnk-l i hidncr The autocratic wake of 2005 left reform advocates crestfallen, for the presidential and parliamentary elections had momentarily answered long-standing calls by Nour, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the broader set of democracy activists whose hopes they carried. Beginning in the spring of 2003, public protests over the second Palestinian /«//^c/-« and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had morphed into rallies directed at President Mubarak, his family, and his associates. Print media crystallized this discontent, with the Nasserist weekly Al-Arabi and tbe new independent Al-Masry Al- Youm assiduously exposing the regime's excesses. In March 2003, an estimated 10,000 protesters occupied Cairo's central square and chanters coupled their outrage against the United States with critiques of Mubarak and his sons."^ State security rigidly corralled subsequent demon- strations, but the reemergence of public protests amid the martial law-like conditions of Egypt's state of emergency (in effect continuously since 1981) symbolized broad dissatisfaction during Mubarak's fourth term (1999-2005). In December 2004, a new organization, calling itself the Egyptian Movement for Change or Kifaya (Enough), initiated protests decrying fijrther presidential terms for Mubarak and condemning the rumored plan of a dynastic succession. Kifaya's demonstrations varied in size from dozens to hundreds of protestors and seemed to embolden other groups to articulate their criticisms and manifest the depth of their popular support." By the time Mubarak displayed his newly minted electoral bona fides, Kifaya's calls had lost their earlier resonance, mainly because the government had silenced so many advocates of reform. While Nour languished in prison, the Ministry of Interior FALL/WINTER Z007 • VOLUME XIV, ISSUE I JASON BROWNLEE began mass arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members in March 2006. As the number of detainees approached one thousand, the crackdown demonstrated the ephemeral impact of the Brotherhood's expanded parhamentary presence.'^ Over the Brotherhood's objec- tions, parliament renewed the authoritarian state of emergency laws for an additional two years, starting in April 2006.'^ Other victims of the post-2005 backlash included veteran judges and intrepid bloggers sanctioned for exposing state corruption. Would- be contestants in local elections were also chagrined to hear they had been postponed unril spring 2008. Hence, the trend toward muffling dissent and curtailing competi- tion was clear barely a year after the May 2005 amendment had been approved, and it would only quicken in subsequent months. The sources of this indomitable autocratic drive—plus the signs of its next destination—are found among the regime's ranking leaders and their shared commitment to retain power. STEWARDS OF DEMOCRACY: THE RUUNG EUTE'S SELF-LEGITIMATION President Mubarak's much touted constitutional amendment in 2005 was a poor substitute for the political advances his critics had demanded. Rather than reinvigorating Egypt's moribund political system, the measure reinforced what is arguably the main obstacle to electoral democracy: the ruling elite situated in the National Democratic 76 Party, bolstered quietly but firmly by the state's repressive agencies. Those who head the regime's political and security wings have proven consistently unwilling to share power with their critics. Wrapped in the mantle of modernization and