Illegitimate Egyptian Elections

SPECIAL annotated

Editor’s Note: Here we go again: another “demonstration election” in a US client state (see below). The media are presenting this election as “proof” that democracy has returned to Egypt, and that the battle in the streets against military rule makes no sense and is therefore superfluous and even suspect, the work of the usual “dark forces.” They fail to dig deeper or even inform the American public that voting is compulsory in Egypt, and subject to heavy fines and penalties for non-compliance.

Demonstration elections are “free elections” as a tool of public relations.

Elections have been used by the United States as an instrument of management in Third World client states since the turn of the century. The functions which they have served, however, have changed in accordance with the shifting demands placed upon the managers. The aim in holding such elections has always been to ensure ‘stability’. In the first half of this century the threat to stability came almost exclusively from within the client states, which were subject to internal turmoil and thus threatened with a loss of ‘independence.’ In recent decades, serious challenges have arisen from within the United States itself. It is this shift in functional need that has led to the emergence of elections oriented to influencing the home (U.S.) population, which we designate ‘demonstration elections.’

— Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U.S.-staged elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador, South End Press, 1984, p. 1. —P. Greanville
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By Stephen Lendman

Last February, Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship ended. Another one replaced him. Egypt’s military holds absolute power. Authoritarian dominance is unchallenged. Elections are more theater than real. Egypt’s multi-round complex process complicates them further. So do logistics. Understanding what to do is daunting.

The hybrid ballot lists parties and individual candidates. Voters choose from both. Candidates represent professionals and worker/farmers. Influence peddling and fraud are rife.

Egypt’s process perhaps has no parallel anywhere. Voters cast three votes, including for scores of new parties and candidates they don’t recognize. Egypt’s junta deliberately designed a hard to comprehend complex system despite strong opposition from participating parties.

Individual candidates will be chosen by popular vote. Party totals may not determine representation in Parliament. Party listed candidates will get seats based on how high they’re listed.

At issue is controlling the process and outcome.

Vote-counting is especially prone to fraud. One of Stalin’s memorable quotes was, “It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

Some results will be announced after each round. Party list ones won’t come until January.

Human rights activist Hossam Bahgat complained about Egypt’s allegedly first ever “free and fair election,” saying “we’ve opted for one of the world’s most complicated electoral systems.”

Of course, regime supporters call it free and fair. Independent observers see it otherwise.

Procedurally it works as follows:

6,700 candidates are participating;

Lower House People’s Assembly voting is held on November 28, 29, December 14 and January 3; 498 members are chosen for five-year terms – 454 by proportional representation, another 44 in single-seat constituencies, and 10 more members nominated;

Upper House Shura Council voting will be on January 29, February 14 and March 4; 264 members are chosen for six-year terms; 174 are directly elected; the president appoints the others;

Presidential voting will occur sometime from mid-2012 to 2013; no date was announced.

Egypt’s governorates, divided into varying numbers of districts, vote on different days, further complicating the process. Cairo, Alexandria and seven other governorates began voting on November 28. The remaining 18 will vote in two later rounds.

Voters will complete two ballots, choosing a party and individual candidates. Each district will elect four to 12 party MPs. They’ll also choose popularly elected ones.

In Cairo, for example, 36 party candidates will be chosen in four districts, as well as 18 popularly elected ones in nine districts.

Allocating party seats in Cairo works as follows:

if party A gets 50% of the vote, their top 18 candidates are chosen;

if party B gets 25%, their top nine ones are picked;

if party C gets 25%, their top nine also are seated.

Seats are divided equally between professional and worker/farmer classifications. If the top two candidates from each category win a majority of votes, runners-up will be passed over for the highest standing candidate of the alternate working class. Try sorting that out.

The process is so complicated, it’s hard understanding and explaining it properly. Imagine how Egypt’s voters feel. Most are flying blind.

Egypt’s Anti-Democratic Tradition

Last year’s parliamentary elections were corrupted by fraud, violence and repression. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) dominated. Opposition parties won only seven seats. Another seven went to independent candidates.

Muslim Brotherhood candidates were entirely shut out. This year, they’re expected to emerge dominant with less than a majority overall. Voting so far is reasonably orderly and peaceful. Of course, outcomes matter most.

Egyptians will eventually realize they’ve again been had like so many previous times. Entrenched junta power won’t yield. Egyptians wanting civilian rule won’t get it.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) will retain power to propose and veto legislation, convene and adjourn parliament, appoint and replace the prime minister and cabinet members, and have final say on how Egypt’s governed. Elected officials will serve them.

Traditional authoritarian rule runs the country. Elections don’t choose those running it. They provide a veneer of democratic change, not the real thing.

During single-party elections from 1957 – 1972, candidates were screened for party loyalty. In the 1960s, dual-member constituencies were introduced with seats reserved for worker/farmers. It hardly mattered. In 1976, Anwar Sadat allowed left, center and right parties to compete. Independents could also run.

In 1979, however, candidates opposing Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel faced repression and electoral fraud. Mubarak’s 1984 and 1987 elections marginally improved the process. More parties could run, including ones Sadat excluded. Muslim Brotherhood candidates were allowed to run under the auspices of an allied secular party.

However, the 1984 Election Law excluded smaller parties from parliament. None getting less than 8% support won seats. Instead, their votes were added to the party receiving a plurality.

In addition, the dual-member constituency system was replaced by multi-member districts in which party lists competed. Parliament remained a bourgeoisie preserve. Opposition parties were marginalized. Generals dominate to this day.

They’ve run Egypt since Nasser’s Free Officers Movement gained power in 1952. They have major economic interests. Real opposition isn’t tolerated. Egypt’s Emergency Law enforces power. First enacted in 1958, it remained in effect since 1967, except for a brief 1980 period. In 1981, its current version was enacted.

It permits suspending constitutional rights, instituting martial law, enforcing censorship, curtailing anti-regime protests, marginalizing opposition, restricting assemblies and free movement, arrests and indefinite detentions with or without charges, trials in military tribunals, and overall extralegal police state harshness.

Amnesty International’s 2010 Egypt Report said Emergency powers are used “to detain peaceful critics and opponents as well as people suspected of security offenses or involvement in terrorism.”

Some are detained administratively. Others get unfair military trials. Many are tortured. Death sentences are imposed. Freedom of speech, assembly and association are restricted or denied.

Egypt’s police, other security forces, and army enforce hardline control. Activists, dissidents, anti-regime Islamists, other opposition forces, and anyone perceived threatening entrenched power can be arrested, detained, tortured and/or killed.

A still in force 1996 press law criminalizes defamation insults, and libel to suppress press freedom and speech, including against bloggers. Academia isn’t safe either. State authorities control appointments, promotions, and university administrations.

As a result, subtle self-censorship prevails. Opposition professors have been fired. Activist students are harassed. Women are regularly mistreated. A 2008 Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights report said over 80% of women suffer public sexual humiliation from groping to criminal assaults.

Gays and other minorities are also targeted. Men accused of homosexual acts are arrested. Though religious freedom is allowed, police at times clash with Christians. Street children are especially abused. Thousands live in Cairo.

Human Rights Watch estimated over 11,000 arrests and detentions for weeks in unsanitary, hazardous conditions, “often with adult criminal detainees who abuse them.” In addition, they’re denied adequate food, water, bedding and medical care. So are other prisoners.

A Final Comment

Institutionalized police state power runs Egypt. Generals are in charge. Parliamentary and presidential elections won’t change things. Egyptians are stuck with systemic injustice they abhor.

Their liberating struggle just began. So have others across the region. They face repressive regimes unwillingly to yield power. They’ll crack down hard to keep it. Washington supports the worst of them.

Democracy’s nowhere in sight. Expecting it is a foolish leap of faith. Military rule remains solid.

Only sustained activism can change things, but never easily, quickly, or without thousands of casualties on Egyptian and other regional streets.

And it can get just as nasty in America and across Europe if social justice protests reach critical mass. Hopefully it won’t deter committed activism for long denied change.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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Freedom Rider: War Criminals

By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

While the United Nations toadies for NATO and the International Criminal Court behaves like an apartheid “Africans Only” prosecutor, a venue in Malaysia dares to put the real international criminals in the dock. “The Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War, found Blair and Bush guilty of ‘crimes against peace’ as a result of their plot to invade and occupy Iraq.” Naturally, the western corporate media pretended the trial never happened.

“The United Nations and its International Criminal Court act at the behest of the western capitalist countries only.”

We live in a world ruled by people who call evil good and good evil. They designate people, the powerful ones, as being worthy of respect and admiration. The presidents and prime ministers are given a pass, no matter how awful their actions, as long as they do their dirty deeds in the names of certain countries.

Institutions such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court are indispensable to them as they cut a swath of terror throughout the world. So great and seemingly untouchable are they that very few people will bother to look at what they really do, and to whom they are beholden. When NATO wanted to carve up Libya, they went to the United Nations claiming that the people of that country needed protection from their president Moammar Gaddafi. The imprimatur of a Security Council vote, and words of support from the Secretary General made the aggressive war appear as if were anything but that.

The same critique can be made of the United Nations’ sponsored International Criminal Court. The ICC was established in order to punish war criminals who were not prosecuted by their own countries. So far, the ICC has only managed to prosecute Africans [4]. The current cases presented for investigation involve Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast and Libya. In the past a few Serbs were thrown in for good measure, but otherwise Africa has been the ICC target.

If Libya is presented as a prosecutable case, it is not Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who ought to be investigated, but Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron. It is they who waged war of aggression and who used the United Nations to make their dubious case.

“If Libya is presented as a prosecutable case, it is not Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who ought to be investigated, but Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron.”

There is a precedent for calling out the western world’s capitalist war criminals. Earlier this month in Kuula Lumpur, Malaysia, former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad convened a tribunal to investigate George W. Bush and his partner in high crimes, former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair. The Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War, found Blair and Bush guilty of “crimes against peace [5]” as a result of their plot to invade and occupy Iraq. This tribunal has no power of enforcement, but correctly made the case that the U.K. and the U.S. were unwilling to punish their leaders for the horrible deeds they committed.

The United States congress and indeed state legislatures had the power to impeach Bush for the Iraq outrage, but they adamantly and quite publicly refused to do so. Even when the so-called opposition party had the electoral majority and the ability to file charges, they pointedly refused. Obama’s ascension may provide a clue for this seemingly inexplicable behavior. The Democrats already knew that when their turn came to be in the driver’s seat, they would not want the public to have any notions of making them accountable for their criminality.

In reality, the United Nations and its International Criminal Court act at the behest of the western capitalist countries only. They turn a blind eye when Bush and Blair invade Iraq or when their successors kill Libyan civilians. Their partners in the corporate media don’t allow true debate about how they operate and they paid no attention to the Kuala Lumpur tribunal. Once again, we are left to our own devices in finding this or any other information that may deviate from the party line.

“Barack Obama has skillfully managed to copy the Bush agenda, and can expect to be re-elected with the support of people who otherwise call themselves peace lovers.”

None of the television networks and none of the major newspapers reported to their American viewers and readers that the rest of the world is prepared to put their leaders in the dock. Barack Obama has skillfully managed to copy the Bush agenda, and can expect to be re-elected with the support of people who otherwise call themselves peace lovers.

Last week NATO, that is to say the United States, killed six children in Afghanistan in a drone strike. These human beings are given the awful label “collateral damage” when the war criminals want to give a name to the horror they unleash. The Peace Prize winner said nothing, and neither did his supporters.

It doesn’t matter that most Democrats are prepared to again anoint Barack Obama with the title leader of the free world. Perhaps he should be called the lead criminal of the world and dispense with any idea of freedom. The only freedom involved is his ability to do whatever he likes without ever being called to account.

http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [6] Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.

[7]

war crimes

International Criminal Court

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-war-criminals

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Africa Lies Naked to Euro-American Military Offensive

By BAR executive editor Glen Ford

As the U.S. and its NATO allies move southward to further consolidate their grip on Africa, following the seizure of Libya and its vast oil fields, most of the continent’s leadership seems to welcome re-absorption into empire. “Africa is the most vulnerable region in America’s warpath, a continent ripe for the plucking due to the multitudinous entanglements of Africa’s political and military classes with imperialism.” AFRICOM is already in the cat-bird seat, placed there by Africans, themselves.

“The United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to ‘take’ much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments.”

The United States and its allies are engaged in an Asian and African offensive, a multi-pronged assault thinly camouflaged as humanitarian intervention that, in some regions, looks like a blitzkrieg. This frenzied aggression, still in its first year, saw NATO transformed into an expeditionary force to crush the unoffending Gaddafi regime in Libya and is now poised to topple the secular order in Syria. Although drawing on longstanding schemes for overt and covert regime change in selected countries, and fully consistent with global capital’s historic imperative to bludgeon the planet into one malleable market subordinate to Washington, London and Paris, the current offensive had a particular genesis in time: the nightmare vision of an Arab awakening.

The prospect of an Arab Spring at the dawn of 2011 sparked a general hysteria in imperial capitals. Suddenly, they stared in the face of geopolitical death at the hands of the Arab “street.” Washington understands full well that the emergence of Arab governments that reflect the will of the people would soon result, as Noam Chomsky is fond of saying [5], in the U.S. being “thrown out” of the region – the final toll of the bell, not just for the oil-hungry West, but for international capital’s annexes in the autocratic cesspools of the Persian Gulf.

“The prospect of an Arab Spring at the dawn of 2011 sparked a general hysteria in imperial capitals.”

With centuries of Euro-American domination flashing before their eyes, Washington, London and Paris quickly configured NATO to unleash Shock and Awe on the victim of choice in North Africa: Muammar Gaddafi. The momentum of that show of force has led an expanding cast of imperial actors to the gates of Damascus. But Africa is the most vulnerable region in America’s warpath, a continent ripe for the plucking due to the multitudinous entanglements of Africa’s political and military classes with imperialism. The awful truth is, the United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to “take” much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments and, especially, its soldiers.

AFRICOM, established in 2008 by the Bush administration and now fully the creature of President Obama’s “humanitarian” interventionist doctrine, claims military responsibility for the entire continent except Egypt. The U.S. military command has assembled a dizzying array of alliances with regional organizations and blocs of countries that, together, encompass all but a few nations on the continent – leaving those holdouts with crosshairs on their backs. As the U.S. bullies its way southward in the wake of the seizure of Libya, its path has been smoothed by the Africans, themselves.

“As the U.S. bullies its way southward in the wake of the seizure of Libya, its path has been smoothed by the Africans, themselves.”

This year’s French-led, but nominally United Nations operation to oust the regime of Laurent Gbagbo, in Ivory Coast, was vouchsafed by ECOWAS, the 16-member Economic Community of West African States, including Benin Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

AFRICOM stages a huge, annual military exercise called African Endeavor, which trains African militaries to use “standard communications practices.” African armies are taught U.S. command-and-control procedures, on American-made equipment, that is serviced by American advisors. In 2009, the militaries of 25 African nations took part in the exercise. This year, 40 nations joined Operation African Endeavor, accounting for the vast bulk of the continent’s men under arms.

More insidiously, through AFRICOM’s “soldier-to-soldier” doctrine, U.S. and African military peers are encouraged to forge one-on-one relationship up and down the levels of command: general-to-general, colonel-to-colonel, major-to-major, and even captain-to-captain. AFRICOM hopes these peer partnerings will forge personal relationships with African armed forces over the long haul, regardless of whatever regime is in power.

In the Sahel, AFRICOM maintains close relationships with virtually every nation along the vast band of land south of the Sahara desert that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, all under the heading of “anti-terrorism.” These include Mauritania, Mali, Chad, and Niger, plus Nigeria and Senegal. To the north, AFRICOM has similar ties to the Maghreb countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and, until this year, Gaddafi’s Libya.

“This year, 40 nations joined Operation African Endeavor, accounting for the vast bulk of the continent’s men under arms.”

AFRICOM is often the real power behind nominally African missions. AMISOM, officially the African Union’s so-called peace keeping force in Somalia, is in fact comprised of troops from Uganda and Burundi, U.S. client states that act as mercenaries for Washington, and paid for mainly by the Americans. They are soon to be joined by 500 soldiers from Djibouti. For years, AMISOM was all that saved the puppet regime in Mogadishu from instant annihilation in its tiny enclaves at the hands of the Shabab resistance. Today, the reinforced “African Union” fighters are on the offensive, along with Kenyan and Ethiopian invaders, aimed at smashing the Shabab in a pincer movement. U.S. drones based in Ethiopia and Djibouti bring death from overhead. Thus, a force nominally fielded by the African Union is an active belligerent in a U.S. engineered war that has set the Horn of Africa ablaze – a conflict also sanctioned by IGAD, the regional cooperative body.

It is only a matter of time before Eritrea, an adversary of Ethiopia and one of the few African nations outside the AFRICOM orbit, is attacked – doubtless by nominally African forces backed by the U.S. and French. Certainly, the thoroughly compromised African Union will be in no position to object.

No sooner than the last loyalist stronghold fell in Libya, President Obama extended his “humanitarian” interventionist reach deep into central Africa, sending 100 Special Forces troops to Uganda for later assignment to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the new nation of South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, the French neocolonial outpost where the Americans sent Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide after kidnapping him in 2004. Supposedly, the American Green Berets will hunt for the 2,000 or so fighters of the Lord’s Liberation Army – a force the Ugandans themselves could snuff out if they were not busy acting as America’s mercenaries elsewhere on the continent. (Washington’s other loyal hit man in the region, Rwanda, was cited by a United Nations report as bearing responsibility for some the millions slaughtered in Congo.)

“A force nominally fielded by the African Union is an active belligerent in a U.S. engineered war that has set the Horn of Africa ablaze.”

NATO’s aggression in Libya was made inevitable when Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon dishonored themselves by voting in favor of the bogus “No Fly Zone.” The momentum of the Euro-American offensive flows southward, and will soon set much of the continent afire. The Horn of Africa is already a carnal house of flame and famine, engineered by the Americans but fully joined by Africans and their regional institutions. In the west, ECOWAS legitimizes imperial policies, while in the Sahel, Africans scramble to identify targets for the Americans. Each year, most of the continent’s militaries gather round the Americans to learn how to command and control their own troops, thus making their armies useless to resist the real enemy: the U.S. and NATO.

Betrayed by a political/military class eager to integrate itself into the imperial system on any terms, Africa lies naked to the Euro-Americans.

It will be up to the slums and the bush to reverse this catastrophe. If the Americans and Europeans are to be resisted, Africans will have to fight their own governments, first.

Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [6].