Demonstrating is not democracy

Wednesday February 15, 2012

On the anniversary of the Arab Spring, Rania Hafez says that those who shout loudest about liberty often fail to engage with those who really matter – the public

The Arab spring, the Greek revolt, the ‘Occupy movement’; scenes of citizens across the globe asserting their rights in popular uprisings and mass demonstrations have saturated the media for over a year now. We are told that we are witnessing a revival of democracy at the grass roots, as people fight against autocratic regimes and entrenched interests for their liberty and freedom. This simplistic assessment is questionable.

There have been some tangible democratic gains made. The recent parliamentary elections in Tunisia and Egypt were a substantial achievement for the protestors, who risked their lives in the pursuit of political change. But in both countries the outcome tells us more about the failure of the popular uprisings than their successes.

In Tunisia some of those who stood for elections were discredited politicians from the old regime. That may explain the outcome. In the most fiercely secular country in the Arab world, the election was won by the Islamist party ‘Ennahda’ with an overwhelming 40 per cent of the vote.

In Egypt the ‘Revolution Continues’ party, representing the leaders of the thoroughly modern Facebook and Twitter generation who led the protests in Tahrir Square to oust Mubarak, won only 2 per cent of the vote. The Egyptian electorates returned a parliament made up largely of Islamist parties, who together won 71 per cent of the vote.

In both cases you could say that this is democracy in action and being Islamic does not necessarily imply being undemocratic. It would be churlish to deny that and certainly Ennahda with 89 of the 217 assembly seats has given full support for the secular processes of government.

In Egypt a closer look at the manifesto of some of the Islamist parties reveal a more worrying prospect. Al-Nour, the party that came 2nd with 25% of the vote have declared their aim to establish a crude set of medieval puritan laws (wrongly ascribed to Islamic Sharia law) without any democratic consultation. Spokesman Yousseri Hamed told reporters: “The mechanism of democracy suits me, like elections and ballot boxes to choose my representative. The idea that the people make their own laws though, we reject that.”

How did the Arab Spring that promised so much deliver so little? What the protestors in both Tunisia and Egypt failed to realise is that democracy needs far more than demonstrations. Standing up and shouting in public may feel like political activity and may even make you feel good about yourself, but that is therapy not politics.

The middle classes who led the protests were too busy twittering and tweeting to go out there and engage with the wider population. In their self-absorption they failed to initiate a popular political dialogue and left the field open for some of the reactionary parties. Had they worked to build real political support, the outcome could have been different.

The parties that achieved such resounding successes in the Tunisian and Egyptian elections are the ones that mingled with the people. In the absence of democratic debate, they appealed to pre-existing prejudice. It is not that the Arab electorate lack political nous. They simply gave their votes to those who bothered to engage with them.

Democracy is about ideas, argument and debate. Those who ‘tweet’ loudest are those who ignore the people who have to be won over by argument. Social media in the Middle East is largely an activity of the middle class flattering itself about its influence, encouraged by Western pundits and the ‘twitterarchy’. But democracy requires more than Facebook and trendy demonstrations. It’s in deliberate, consistent and popular engagement with argument and debate that we advance the cause of liberty.

Rania Hafez is Director of Muslim Women in Education