النمور من الشمال

We’re working on a hard-hitting piece with a Boursa angle but we thought we should share some observations and information about the old neighborhood, seeing as the original raison d’etre for this blog was to chronicle its happenings.

1. Jefe de Jefes

a.

It is with great sadness that we report that the two brothers who worked at Teba, who looked like twins but were actually not, and who could easily be identified by their very different temperaments, have returned to their homes in Benha to open their own shop. We suppose congratulations are in order, though we also note their departure heavy hearts.

When we were new to the neighborhood, the sheikh who owns Tiba and sometimes ran the cash register ripped us off. When he attempted the same a second time, we used some recently learned (at the time… we’ve since forgotten what they were) and well-rehearsed phrases to shame him. After that we settled into a faux-sincere routine where he would ask whichever of the brothers happened to be working the price of whatever it was that I was buying, knowing that they were beyond reproach.

The sheikh (“al-shahir bi Sheikh Mohamed”, as the sign proclaims) ran for parliament in the 2010 elections and lost. He did not, to our knowledge, run this time, though the signage for his campaign headquarters, which is actually just the place where some of the cafes at that end of the Boursa stash their chairs overnight, still exists, his scowling visage hanging over the merry proceedings that have long been a staple of Boursa life.

Many of the waiters remain, including Shokolata, who we can exclusively report is a firm favorite of one of Cairo’s premiere lady journalists.

b.

The Hag’s shop, on the same alley as Tiba but closer to the mosque and Vodafone, continues to hum along. The hag and his wife are both delightful people, and the hag is as honest as they come.

2. El Gringo y El Mexicano

Bakar, our old bowab, moved a few buildings down, driven out, he says, by the awful woman who illegally built an apartment above ours.

The story is as follows: During our tenure at the Boursa, we lived on the top floor. Then one day construction began above us, and we learned that the building manager, who we had never seen or heard of until that point, had received permission from the building’s owner to add a floor to the building. As it was clearly illegal, most of the construction happened in the middle of the night. Water leaks in the areas where the cement was mixed, new fractures in the ceiling of our apartment and frenzied trips upstairs to berate the workers became regular occurrences.

Our own bouts of anger paled in comparison to those of the unwanted upstairs neighbor, whose vitriolic fury was directed at anyone who stood between her and her illegal Boursa-top aerie, including laborers, other residents who were more vocal in their opposition to her ridiculous plot, and of course Bakar.

Despite her rather obvious faults as a person, she occasionally oozed a fake sense of intimacy when she wanted something. She used this to some effect, at least until the spell wore off, as when she almost succeeded in convincing us to tutor her children in English. We think it’s why Bakar stayed as long as he did.

At any rate, he can now be found a few doors down, still as energetic as ever and now 100% more married. Let the blogosphere ring out with zaghareet (a word which, coincidentally, is a very rare case of fauxnomotopoeia). We are of course tremendously happy for him, as we hope you are too. Last we heard she’s still living in Aswan, which is kind of a drag, though we’ll admit we didn’t visit him on our latest trip, which we would like to chalk up to the general revolutionary ferment but was actually more a function of our not wanting to be treated like a basha by Bakar and whichever family members happened to be around.

3. Vivan Los Mojados!

We are happy to report that the bar at the Cosmopolitan remains one of downtown’s better drinking options: more intimate than the Greek club, cozier than Le Bistro and less dingy than the establishments collectively known as baladi bars.

As an added bonus for those whose tastes run to the literary or the op-ed writerary, the man who almost singlehandedly made the pullover toxic among Egypt’s political classes used to hold his salon at the Cosmopolitan. Even if that is no longer the case, the bar, if we can extrapolate from our most recent visit, still attracts an older leftist crowd.

4. El Muro

We assume that by now you’re all familiar with Cairo Divided, the photo essay/essay essay put together by former TBE roommate and occasional contributor Jason Larkin and journalistic wunderkind Jack Shenker. If not you should go get a copy from the CIC or order a free copy immediately. In our hopeless bourgeouisity we’re now actively lobbying for them to make an iPad version with the new iBooks Author.

The project is about the satellite cities orbiting Cairo, though our narrow focus allows us only to report on the Boursa’s first gated community, which is the coffee shop on the central north-south alley that always strove to attract a slightly more upscale crowd of shisha connoisseurs. We always respected their concept, bold as it was, though we do find this new affinity for fencing “a bit much”, as Larry David would say.

*We are well aware of the fact that the grammar of this post’s title is transgendered, and we don’t care.

Who knew the US government had a sewing book?

“This was a campaign for social behavioral change,” he said. “I would ask people, ‘What do you do when you’re frustrated?’ And they would say, ‘I march.’ ”

His reply became almost standard, he said: “If the people who marched actually voted, we wouldn’t have to march in the first place.”

That’s an NYT article from a couple days ago, about Obama’s hopes to win Arizona by galvanizing the Latino vote next year. The situation for Latinos in Arizona and liberals and leftists in Egypt is quite different. But…

We always thought the entreaties (from various quarters) about the need for liberals to get organized in the run-up to the elections slightly missed the point. The young people who would have been, in any normal election, the foot soldiers of the liberal parties, the people who were willing to knock on doors and do other thankless tasks for little or no pay, for an ideal, were instead preoccupied with the ongoing revolution.

We know that many of the young revolutionaries would never cop to being liberals, but we’re also willing to propose, and maybe we’re wrong, that much of what has happened in terms of SCAF and police abuses and failures has led to a situational radicalization, polarizing opinions that will move to the center if and when the systematic abuses stop.* This has nothing to do with selling out or other pig-headed notions of ideological purity, only that in a properly functioning political system many of these people probably do not subscribe to radical politics. (Remember that the debates about boycotting were not generally because Tahrir wanted to create a dictatorship of the proletariat, they occurred because people questioned whether a legitimate election could or should be held under the current military junta that the week before was, if not responsible, at least complicit in the deaths of at least 41 people and the injury of thousands.)

Even if we are wrong, and the vast majority of Tahrir regulars are and remain radical leftists, so be it. Egypt will have a strong left, all the better to counter the already existing radical right represented by the Nour Party, and, we expect, some of more provincial-minded FJP MPs that will turn up in parliament.

The left was bound to suffer in these elections no matter how much energy went into organizing for them. We won’t make the argument here, but there is an argument to be made that the millioneyat and sit-ins (some of which may have overstayed their welcome), which we argued above depleted the organizational power of the liberal and leftist parties, were worth it in terms of gaining concessions from SCAF, as compared to whatever extra votes the left would have won had they maintained a single-minded focus on the elections.

The simple fact is that the Brotherhood was always bound to win big in free elections. They did relatively well in patently unfree elections, in 2006. Those who voted for the Salafis, the big “surprise” of the elections, probably weren’t going to vote for liberals anyway. Fascists, on the other hand, should be kicking themselves for not forming a party. Hard luck, Zpider.

We can rehearse the reasons why, but we’d rather not because we figure that if you read this far you know about the Brotherhood’s social services, iron discipline, etc. During the Mubarak years, of course, the left was not in a position to provide social services because non-religion-based civil society was systematically crushed or coopted by the state. Whether the state didn’t crush the Brotherhood because it couldn’t or because it was useful as a way of delivering social services the government was too incompetent or otherwise unable to provide or because he feared Sadat’s fate if he cracked down too hard on the Islamists is immaterial, as is whether the Salafi trend was actively encouraged as an MB counterweight or an organic phenomenon or whatever. (How the Salafis switched their former political quietism to active participation continues to fascinate us, however, and we wish someone would write about it.)

The important thing is that now and in the coming period, liberals no longer face these constraints and can start providing services, if that’s what it takes to win votes or get their well-shod feet in the door in areas without large “natural” liberal constituencies. Even without the political benefits, food aid, tutoring and other help with school, clinics, etc. are all worthwhile uses of time and money. Even despite the continuing kerfuffle over foreign funding, we imagine there are enough rich, liberal Egyptians in Egypt or abroad who can afford to fund these initiatives, just as we’re sure that many of them have been funding similar initiatives, just not under the umbrella of a party or political movement.

On a shorter time horizon, there’s no reason why the liberal parties can’t crib from the FJP’s tactics in the first round, of having laptops at polling stations to tell people where they should vote, passing out fliers, etc. Many or most voters in all democracies are low-information, and perhaps in Egypt moreso, owing to lack of internet connectivity and an execrable state media. If such people are making last-minute decisions based on things like some nice person helping you with voting procedures, there’s absolutely no reason not to try. Even if there aren’t enough laptops or volunteers to go to every polling station, as the FJP apparently did, they can go to some. At the very least it will provide data about whether this type of voter outreach has a noticeable effect on vote tallies in a given district compared to similar districts where no volunteer was present.

A couple final thoughts: The Egyptian left was famously strong in the 1970s and there’s no reason it can’t be again. One thing we always find odd is when people, often graven-faced, say things like, “Egypt has changed since (insert decade)” as though it has now reached the culmination of its historical trajectory and will in the future be immune to change. That’s obviously not the case. If we were liberal or leftist Egyptians, we would be revisiting the history of the 1970s left, not to read again the well-known story that ended with Mubarak assuming the presidency, but to learn or relearn what organizational forms the left took at the time. We’re also particularly interested in how the elections in Mahalla will go, though we have no idea who’s running or even in which round they’ll take place.

* We felt it ourselves when we arrived in Tahrir last Thursday, upon seeing the injured of Mohamed Mahmoud. Even now we question whether we should be writing about Egypt in a sort of “rational” way. That is part of the reason we haven’t written about the country for a long time, because we don’t, from our perch in the Gulf, have any feel for it anymore as a lived experience, always quite intense and now moreso, and as such are at a loss for words, despite following it quite closely.

a milli a milli a milli

Huge numbers of people turned up in Tahrir last week, despite a noticeable lack of official enthusiasm from the Brotherhood leadership. The obvious lesson for the MB to draw is that there is a very large constituency that wishes to see SCAF out. That is why the Brotherhood is making loud noises, the first day after the first round of elections, about a civilian takeover of Egypt’s government immediately after the elections. SCAF, after all, could easily characterize the protestors in Tahrir as not representing Egypt (putting aside the casting of aspersions that they are not “Real Egyptians”) but it will be much harder for them to do so when confronted with a coalition of the MB and the denizens of Tahrir (ie the old revolutionary coalition).

 From this we can draw a few conclusions about the demonstrations in Tahrir last week, which many are prematurely viewing as a missed opportunity or as the last gasp of liberalism in Egypt before the country drowns in a torrent of fundamentalism. In fact the protests have already had, and will continue to have, profound implications for Egyptian politics. Here are three of the most important:

1. Moving up the presidential elections.
2. Putting to rest the idea, hitherto still popular with sectors of the press and sad-sack liberals that large-scale protests were only possible with Islamist participation. (We know there was scattered Islamist participation last week but the key is that it was not organized.) The Brotherhood may have cultivated this idea for their own reasons, but as we said, it has now been disproven.
3. Girding the MB for a showdown with SCAF. We see on Twitter that Essam El-Erian is already walking back his comments to the NYT about challenging SCAF rule in the elections’ immediate aftermath, but does anyone think that the Brotherhood would have been quite so willing to challenge SCAF power so soon after just the first round of elections at all had they not seen all those people in Tahrir last week? Perhaps it was just a trial balloon, but we think the balance of power has shifted in favor of civilians, and will have done so decisively at the conclusion of election season. SCAF has been put on notice. One could say that the MB is still cowardly, because if they had called their cadres into the street last week there is a good chance that SCAF would have given up and handed power to a civilian council. Just as likely they would have delayed elections, an outcome that the Brotherhood did not want. Not because they thought they wouldn’t win if elections were held later, but because in any presidential council scenario, they would have been equal partners with the liberals and leftists who were the first movers last week. Pursuing the electoral route, and assuming they win, the Brotherhood will be able to lead a coalition of political powers against SCAF, rather than just being one party or tendency among several.

Our basic point is that the combination of elections and last week’s demonstrations are good news for those who believe that getting SCAF out should be the first priority for democrats in Egypt. We’ll write our (also optimistic) take on the elections and the constitution later, but for now here are a couple of songs that make us think about the revolution.

This one is probably the best song ever written about hip hop, and the only spoken word thing TBE ever listened to more than 1/2 times. Also has a lot to say about the revolution, just replace the words “hip-hop” with the words “the revolution”:

This one makes less sense, just a nice song with a couple resonant lines:

TBE still carries a torch, however flickering, for Mohamed ElBaradei, but we feel the need to offer some advice on his* “campaign,” and where we see things moving from here. We originally intended to make this one long post, but decided that might be too boring for readers, so we’ve split it into two parts. Part 1 deals with the necessity of creating campaign infrastructure now, instead of waiting until the immediate pre-election period. Part 2 will deal with policy and messaging, and what we see as ElBaradei’s strengths and weaknesses in these areas, especially vis-a-vis Amr Moussa.

Part 1: The Short Game

First things first, we, like many other people, are overly focused on the presidential election. In our case, this is a response to Egypt’s long history of presidential power trumping all other political forces, the fact that the presidential candidates are more-or-less known quantities, and presidential elections being inherently sexier than parliamentary elections. That said, this parliament will have outsized importance, tasked with appointing those who will draft Egypt’s new constitution. In functioning democracies, branches of government jealously guard their prerogatives. Thus one can expect parliament to appoint a constitutional committee that will favor the interests of the legislative branch, not those of the executive. There is a danger in doing so, as the serial parliaments in the run-up to the 1952 coup demonstrate. But presidential power ain’t gonna be what it used to be. Which brings us to ElBaradei.

The good doctor’s legacy may not depend on his winning the presidency. Far more important, at this stage, is creating a party that will serve as a vehicle for his political program and, secondarily, his presidential ambitions. We may have missed it, but we haven’t heard anything about him or his crew collecting the requisite signatures from the requisite number of governorates or even thinking of a name for his party, at a time when all the good words for party names are already taken by existing parties, tainted by association with the old regime or being scooped up by new parties. Some amazing things have been done in Egypt despite all the good names being gone, but we wouldn’t risk it. We would also agitate against using “Change” in the party name, as it might be alienating to some.

By our lights, the biggest advantage ElBaradei currently has two organizational advantages over the candidate to beat, Amr Moussa. First, he has access to the existing grassroots network created by the National Association for Change. He should be using it to find candidates and credible spokespeople, particularly outside the major urban centers. This is doubly important for a potential candidate like ElBaradei, because the man is rather less than charismatic, an issue to which we’ll return in part 2.

Second, he has a major advantage in number of supporters on Facebook. As of this writing, the main Amr Moussa page has 176,691 followers. ElBaradei has 366,633. The trick here is to convert these passive fans into active supporters. We’re not sure exactly how this can be done, as group administrators on Facebook don’t have access to the full profiles of their fans, making it impossible to create what could be a formidable voter database. However imperfect a solution, the first step towards should be to announce meetings of ElBaradei supporters in different locations around Egypt, with the explicit intent of creating the infrastructure for a new party. Even if the party is not yet at the level of preparing for an election, there are reasons to gather supporters now. First, supporters can provide feedback to the home office in Doqqi (or wherever the campaign is based) on what issues are on the minds of supporters. Second, these supporters can create public events to build trust in the ElBaradei brand, by, for instance, organizing neighborhood clean-ups or beautification schemes, mobile clinics and other measures that garner positive publicity and do good. Finally, it’s an organic way to find supporters with leadership potential, either as parliamentary candidates or spokespeople.

The other obvious places ElBaradei should be organizing are at the universities and amongst those who voted “No.” Although every candidate will attempt to seize the mantle as the “change” candidate in an election pivoting away from dictatorship, ElBaradei has more credibility than, say, Amr Moussa in claiming to be the true seizer of said mantle. Change is a message that appeals more to young people than old people. As such, the universities should be ripe for the supporter picking. The only problem here is that school will be out sooner rather than later, and when they get back into session it will be too late to organize for the parliamentary elections, currently scheduled for September.

As for no voters, we know that different people supported “Yes” and “No” for different reasons, and you can’t automatically assume no means yes to ElBaradei or vice versa. Nonetheless, we’re still willing to bet that “No” voters on the whole are more politically savvy (not necessarily in the sense of making better political choices, but following politics more closely). We say this in part because the areas with higher percentages of no votes tend anecdotally to correlate with areas with higher media saturation, and, as the brilliant Moftasa pointed out, there appears to be a correlation between no votes and educational attainment in the governorates, the latter which, we suspect, also correlates to having the time and resources to access to media and, crucially, critical media. If that is the case, those districts with high levels of no votes should be considered priorities for organizing. (For those interested, governorate and district-by-district voting breakdowns are available here.)

What this all comes down to is that, in the parlance of US electoral politics, the next few months should be about shoring up the base, so that the period leading up to the parliamentary and presidential elections can be about reaching out to undecided voters or the majority who don’t care, either due to general lack of interest or lack of means to actively participate in politics. We get the sense, though, that ElBaradei has so far been content to issue the occasional gnomic statement on Facebook or Twitter, while other candidates are constantly making the scene. We still believe that ElBaradei will present the most formidable challenge to Amr Moussa if he is willing to commit the time and resources to create a credible campaign. If he’s not, then he should say so now.

Part 2 coming soon…

*Although much of this is ElBaradei-centric, it could also be adapted to other candidates, like Bastawisi, about whom we know little but who is considered a viable candidate by some people we trust. At the moment we’re trying to get over the fact that his name, roughly translated from Spanish, means “Enough Lil’ Wayne,” which is a platform we strongly oppose.

What with Lil’ Wayne’s new album coming out last week, it seemed only natural to revisit his catalogue and its lasting contributions to Arabic song. In particular we were drawn to his brilliant commentary on the hyper-extended greeting sequence, with which we’re sure many of you are familiar. We write, of course, of Lil Wayne’s “’عامل ايه؟”

It seems, however, that Tarek Masoud may have heard the lyrics differently, as an ode to the heir apparent. He apparently heard “Gamali, Gamali” (sample lyrics: “I’m a Young Guard Gamallionaire/tougher than Captain Mamdouh’s eyewear”…“What’s a goon to a goblin?”…“I’m okay, but my pops’ sick” )  In short, a modern-day “O Captain, My Captain” (or is that “O Hosni, My Hosni”???)

That was an awful lot of throat clearing but you know what DJ Kool always says… (sample lyric: “We never let the blog magnetize me no more”)

As for the article itself:

Masoud sets his article up as an opposition between “some democratic ideal” and four options:

1. Gamal
2. Hosni
3. (stony-faced apparatchik-like intelligence chief) Omar Suleiman
4. military coup

He immediately dismisses what many, including us, saw as Mohammed ElBaradei’s initial promise, since he has spent most of the time since his initial return to Egypt acting out the chorus of an old Tribe Called Quest song, and not tending to his flock in Egypt proper.

That’s fair enough. His dismissals of the other options aren’t nearly as convincing. Essentially the only thing holding the article together is the idea that it’s better to have a civilian dictator ruling Egypt than a military dictator. Thus Mubarak pere is rejected because he would probably die in office, and a new president chosen by “a shadowy conclave of generals, ruling party notables, and big businessmen.” This group would not, Masoud maintains, choose Gamal, but rather someone like old-stony face himself, Omar Suleiman.

A few problems with this argument: First, Gamal’s businessmen cronies have likely earned a place at that table. They are, after all, big businessmen. Second, we don’t think that the generals take their orders from the US, but some friendly advice would certainly be imparted. We’re sure Suleiman would be acceptable to the US, a well-known quantity, as it were, Gamal likely would be even more acceptable. The argument being that Suleiman is rather too important as a regional troubleshooter to take on the presidency, what with Sudan falling apart and the Palestinians in disarray. (We expect these storylines to continue to play out well into the future.) And we’re sure the US has better relations with both the military and Gamalist businessman class than with the fusty old NDP old guard (aka ruling party notables).

Let’s suppose, for an instant, that the US does not exert significant influence and the military sides with the NDP old guard and opts for a steady hand at the till. Let’s call this scenario Safwat’s Last Stand. Would it not be a better outcome for democratization than Gamal winning the presidency in a rigged election? All the old vs. new guard tensions minus the calming influence of Hosni Mubarak sounds like just the kind of scenario that might lead to a genuine democratic opening, creating the kinds of intra-elite rifts of which democratization drives are made (RT @jbrownlee). One might even go so far as to say that the NDP old guard wants Hosni to run for another term next year, because this scenario is just about their only hope for medium-term longevity.

Finally, we obviously know nothing about the Egyptian military other than what little we do know. But we would guess the last thing the military wants is to insert an officer into the presidency, which would just complicate things, serving to tarnish the military’s relatively sterling reputation in the eyes of Egypt’s civilian population. Furthermore, even by the debased standards of US foreign policy in the Middle East, we’re not sure policymakers would welcome a military president brought to power by a coup. Thus we would expect the army, to guarantee the dollars keeps flowing, to appoint a civilian or at the very least hastily organize some flawed elections to give our man in Cairo a democratic patina. Much better, in the final analysis, to appoint a civilian who will leave military prerogatives undisturbed. A civil-military showdown, if one is to occur at all, will come only after a semi-successful transition to democracy.

We’re not saying that we expect any of these scenarios to come to pass, only trying to complicate the simple if Hosni dies, then Omar Suleiman reigns causal chain.

Which leads us to Masoud’s preferred option, namely Gamal running for and winning the presidency. The professor offers a number of what we would term silly reasons for his stated preference. First is that a civilian president will not command the blind loyalty of the armed forces, and thus be less likely to rule with an iron fist. Last we checked, however, it was the interior ministry, not the armed forces, on the front lines enforcing NDP rule in Egypt, even if the army remains the ultimate guarantor. We don’t see why the interior ministry would be any less pliant in Gamal’s hands than in those of his father, and we’re frankly surprised at this elision of the roles of the armed forces and the interior ministry.

The second silly reason is that Gamal would be the first civilian president to come to power via an election. This may well be the case, but we wouldn’t be at all surprised if Hosni Mubarak is still alive for the 2011 election, which would cause us to put an extra-large asterisk next to this civilian election. In fact, Masoud just about admits as much. elected in an inheritance of power scenario.

Then there’s a bunch more stuff about the symbolism of a civilian president contesting an election, which we can safely say is nonsense, particularly as Gamal’s first campaign would very likely be undertaken while his father was still alive. This eventuality would stimulate two outcomes: His father’s explicit blessing would undermine the old guard, allowing Gamal to begin consolidating power around himself. His father would remain to act as Gamal’s consigliere to the military, were they to be in any way miffed about inheritance and/or a non-military president. The longer he stayed around, the better for Gamal’s long-term prospects.

Which brings us to the next point: Where Masoud sees six long years of potential organizing by Egypt’s (notoriously fractious) opposition, we see six long years of power-consolidation, patronage-network building and all the other perks of unchecked power. In our view, the shorter the next president has before facing his or her first election, the better.

In conclusion: Contra Masoud, we believe that Gamal running for president in 2011 would be among the worst possible outcomes for future democratization efforts in Egypt, particularly if his father is still alive. The best possible outcome would be the incumbent’s expiration well into his next term, and the old guard’s weaseling its way into power. Second best would be Gamal’s coming to power with little time to prepare for a new election. Third best would be the incumbent’s expiration in the immediate run-up to the election, leaving a power vacuum in his wake. As others have pointed out, the fact that Gamal will have to face future elections isn’t exactly exciting news, nor should his potentially having to be re-elected be seen as some possible democratic catalyst, any more than the Wafd Party having a new leader signals an opposition renaissance.

***

Late update: The new Wafd leader who Masoud mentions as a possible future anti-Gamal candidate, al-Sayed al-Badawi, recently purchased leftist newspaper al-Dustour. This morning Egypt awoke to the news that al-Badawi had fired certified opposition icon Ibrahim Eissa from his position as Editor-in-Chief of said newspaper. The step was apparently taken after the regime pressured Badawi not to publish an op-ed by Mohammed ElBaradei and Eissa stood by his decision to publish.

Juelz

Although TBE’s dream of opening a hamburger joint in Cairo is currently on sabbatical, we’re happy to announce that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the tonier districts of Zamalek and beyond. It is with great pleasure that we announce the founding of Amoura Designs, the brainchild of a most stylish friend of TBE, which is currently producing gorgeous jewelry like that which graces the top of this post. Check the Facebook page for ordering information and more work samples.

The Fanilla District Will Not Be Televised

As many of you are surely aware, TBE has a long and proud history of pro-fanilla activism, and a previous post on the subject inspired some of the most beautiful and poignant comments ever to have graced our pages. Thus it was with a heaping helping of shock that we learned today that there is a whole district of the city, practically in the Boursa’s backyard, devoted to the fanillat, miscellaneous undergarments and sleepwear trades. Said district stretches for a couple blocks of Mohammed Farid Street as it exits northward from Moustapha Kamel Square. You should definitely pay it a visit if you haven’t already.

Selected Shorts

While shorts have been seen with increasing frequency in and around Midan Messaha in Doqqi and elsewhere over the past couple years, it was not until the past couple days that we’ve seen shorts in usually-staid downtown (with the notable exception of that one guy who can usually be found hanging out near the Iranian Carpets shop, who wears shorts regularly, and could and should, it must be said, be giving masters classes to the whippersnapper shabab of today on the sartorial art of shorts-wearing). We’re generally on the “shorts are only appropriate as house clothes or sporting activities” side of the ledger in the great “shorts in public” debate, but if the influx of shorts into downtown, paired with…

Counterveiling Winds/Trends/Etc.

Also, people have been saying for a while that veiling, the social barometer par excellence for trend-piece wielding journalists and their country cousins from Thinktankia, is on the decline in Egypt. We can’t decide whether we should co-sign on this idea, and you’ll have to send us a care package if you want us to care, but sometimes a headline is too good not to use.

…means that the Egyptian economy is on the upswing and/or are increasingly ready to seize control of their collective future from the trust fund babies, then we’re all for more PDLs and PDHs.

TBE WEB EXCLUSIVE

If there’s one thing that’ll awaken TBE from the non-alcoholic champagne and caviar haze in which we currently live, it’s poorly argued journalism about Mohamed ElBaradei. Reading the recent commentary on ElBaradei in Newsweek, we kept having to check the URL, to make sure we weren’t reading the aggressively illogical and agrammatical musings of a certain “journalist” whose comments, despite being free, often leave one demanding a refund.

Since we’re shorter on time than we used to be, we’ve simply reprinted the article with some parenthetical annotation. Following the article are a few more thoughts, and an invitation to the article’s author to clarify a few points.

Paved With Good Intentions

(We assume the journalist didn’t write the headline, so will refrain from criticizing. Also.)

When Mohamed ElBaradei’s flight touched down at Cairo International Airport on Feb. 19, he was greeted by hundreds of supporters waving homemade ELBARADEI FOR PRESIDENT banners. After more than 20 years abroad, the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief (and Nobel Peace laureate) had returned home to challenge President Hosni Mubarak’s repressive 29-year rule. Although ElBaradei still hasn’t even announced his candidacy, the internationally respected and domestically lauded reformer has been openly criticizing the Mubarak regime for months—first in Vienna, where he was based, and now from Egypt. ElBaradei’s potential candidacy has galvanized the domestic opposition as the country prepares for presidential elections in September 2011. (Starts off fine.)

But while the kindly, honest technocrat seems like a self-evidently good choice for leader, his candidacy would spell disaster for an opposition movement already enfeebled by failure. The “unity” platform he preaches has already elicited bickering— (Bickering – amongst the Egyptian opposition??? Grab the smelling salts, we’re feeling faint at the mere thought.) a dangerous test drive for the real thing. (The second half of this sentence doesn’t really make sense.) If he really makes a run, not only will he lose, but he would fracture the fragile coalition of Mubarak’s opponents, leaving them weaker and more demoralized than ever. (Where, we wonder, does the journalist keep her demoralizationometer?) That, in turn, would only empower the despotic president. (He was on the brink of failure. If it weren’t for that pesky do-gooding candidate, he wouldn’t’ve gotten away with it. Scooby-dooby-do.) If ElBaradei wants what’s good for the opposition, he should get out of the way. (Definitely!!! They’ll never succeed if they have a figure to rally around who’s also able to mobilize new constituencies. Also.)

First of all, his candidacy would shatter the coalition binding Mubarak’s opponents. (The article to which the Newsweek article links here actually details an ElBaradei initiative uniting various strands of the opposition, an odd choice to say the least.) ElBaradei’s right to enter the political fray is supported by this coalition—political parties, youth groups, and members of Egypt’s most powerful opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. But if he actually runs, the alliance can’t last. “The opposition itself is extremely divided and ElBaradei is a symbol primarily because he’s not beholden to any of them … The moment he [moves beyond the common ground of political reform], he starts alienating specific opposition groups,” says Nathan Brown, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. (Perhaps that’s why he’s stressing constitutional reforms that would allow them all to run on their own platforms!!!) He can’t win the support of both secular reformists and Islamists (he wouldn’t be the first to try and fail). (A crystal ball and a demoralizationometer! This is clearly a journalist with many precise instruments at her disposal.) Getting on the ballot will require announcing a campaign platform— (We weren’t aware of that requirement. Is it constitutional?) like where he stands on the role of religion in the Egyptian state—that will divide groups that disagree with each other on fundamental principles. (So the opposition was held together by a thread before ElBaradei’s arrival on the scene. And his presence might eventually sharpen the contradictions to the point where they become untenable. And no one in the opposition is currently aware of these potential contradictions?)

Even if ElBaradei could keep the broader movement together, he’d splinter the most important part of it—the Muslim Brotherhood. (How dare he break up that happy marriage? Also.) Although officially outlawed, Brotherhood candidates running as independents swept the 2005 parliamentary election, winning 20 percent of seats. (Sweeping an election usually means something quite different.) Today, the Islamist group is suffering from an internal divide that threatens their future political participation. The older conservative leaders want the younger politically motivated members to stay out of politics and focus instead on the core mission of social work. (A simplistic analysis.) But those young brothers will likely come out in support of ElBaradei anyway, ruining party cohesion and deepening the group’s generational divide. “They are already fragmented,” says Hossam el-Hamalawy, a prominent Egyptian political blogger. “ElBaradei would fragment them even more.” (The gall of some people…) That’s exactly the outcome Mubarak wants. (We thought he was Egyptian, but perhaps ElBaradei is actually Manchurian?)

ElBaradei would also shake the secular groups. Ayman Nour, a reform candidate who spent more than three years in jail on bogus charges, came in a distant second in the 2005 sham presidential election. He announced his candidacy with the Al Ghad Party for this cycle last week, but, he acknowledges, ElBaradei would probably win his base. (Also he can’t run because of his conviction, but let’s not let that stop us.) “The supporters for change in Egypt are pretty much the same people,” Nour says. Splitting an already small constituency is no way to acquire political power. (Yes, because every single person in Egypt who yearns for change definitely voted for Nour in the last election. Also that constituency for change is small.)

Elsewhere among the secularists, egos are already colliding. A Facebook group called ElBaradei for President has more than 100,000 members, but Ahmed Salah, a leading member of Sixth of April youth—one of the country’s largest anti-regime protest groups and the one responsible for rounding up supporters at ElBaradei’s homecoming demonstration— (We don’t think they were the only ones.) accuses the Facebook group’s founder of sidelining the organization and trying to stop them from meeting with ElBaradei (presumably as a gambit for influence and credit). (Did you hear that joke “How many prima donnas does it take to change a regime?” Also, how about interviewing the group’s founder to get his side of the story?)

Finally, ElBaradei may be causing all this angst for nothing, because it’s not even clear he can run. (He should be charged immediately with involuntary angst-causing and brought before a military court.) Constitutional amendments passed in 2005 place strict limits on potential presidential competition. Independent candidates are required to provide 250 supporting signatures from a combination of elected officials in national and local government—offices controlled by Mubarak’s allies. (They wouldn’t help put someone on the ballot who could pose a legitimate threat to the president.) (Thanks for that parenthetical clarification.) Otherwise, candidates must be nominated by a political party where they’ve held a leadership position for at least one year. ElBaradei himself doesn’t even seem gung-ho. He has announced his own preconditions to running, including elections with international monitors—something Mubarak has never allowed before. (Refusing to run in rigged elections? What a wuss.)

Although the wave of support for ElBaradei shows that Egyptians hunger for political change, he won’t be able to channel idealistic fervor at the poll. It’s demoralizing enough for a national hero to damage an already weak opposition; it’s worse when he inhibits any real chances for political change (they were so promising, after all) and strengthens the president he claims to oppose. Everyone knows the names of a few great men who overthrew an authoritarian regime on a wave of popular support—Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, Lee Kwan Yew. But many more equally worthy ones have failed, instead helping those regimes to thrive; (Change is never gradual. One either becomes a national hero or is consigned to the dustbin full stop.) history quickly buries their names. ElBaradei shouldn’t make himself one of them. (This is a lesson for everyone. If there is even a remote chance of failure, better not to try something at all. Words to live by, for sure.)

***

A couple slightly less sarcastic points and questions:

As we mentioned briefly above, the article never once mentions that ElBaradei has, from the beginning, stressed that he’s more interested in changing the constitution than in running for president. Even if the more narrow point of the article, that ElBaradei should not run for president, were true, not including that information is journalistic malpractice.

Since the journalist has no qualms about dispensing advice to Dr. ElBaradei, we were wondering what her advice to him as to his proper role would be? Since she has so much faith in the oppositions’ ability to succeed in achieving its goals without Dr. ElBaradei, we also wonder how she sees that occurring, considering their long-running inability to weaken the regime’s grip on power.

As we’ve written previously, we think Dr. ElBaradei’s signal accomplishment so far is mobilizing new constituencies for change, which the opposition has failed to do (with the understanding that it is not necessarily the opposition’s fault, as the regime has made the price of political participation very high). This is another salient fact never explored in the article. Why?

As far as we know, the journalist who wrote this piece usually writes straight news, primarily for the Christian Science Monitor. Is she forsaking news writing altogether to become a professional pundit?

TBE’s editors know the journalist, Sarah Topol, socially, and, though we’re not in Cairo, have heard that she stands by the arguments she made in the article. If that is the case, we’d like to offer her a forum to answer our criticisms, either in comments or via email (which we’ll then publish), since healthy debate is the lifeblood of democracy.

Higher Committees and such are nice, but grassroots organizing is better.

Like everyone else, we’ve been focusing on ElBaradei, and the steadily climbing number of supporters he’s attracted on the “ElBaradei for President” Facebook page (up almost 40,000 since his interview with Mona al-Shazly on Sunday). This has led us to thinking about the logical next steps for the campaign mobilizing around ElBaradei.

But first, a digression: There was, at some point, a rash of articles concerned with the question, “Why are so many terrorists engineers?” Most of which drew the wrong conclusions. We’re more interested in is the question of why so many prominent Egyptian bloggers are computer programmers or at least so tech savvy that we don’t understand what they’re talking about when words like “ubuntu” are bandied about.

The (rather banal) point is that, if ElBaradei or his ideas are to stand a fighting chance, the spontaneous movement that has arisen needs to move beyond “clicktivism” to actual mobilization. From URL to IRL, as it were. The best way we’ve thought of to do this is to harness his online popularity to create a new social network specifically for his supporters, that allows smaller groups (“Ain Shams University Faculty of Architecture Students for ElBaradei” or “Zamalek Housewives for ElBaradei,” ad infinitum) to meet offline and to engage in political action, even if said action is as simple as holding a teach-in about ElBaradei or organizing a bake sale.

This is crucial for at least three reasons:

First, engaging in politics is going to take some getting used to. The first step was joining the Facebook group, which wasn’t that hard. Second could be joining an ElBaradei-centered social network, the aim of which, like the one that arose during the Obama campaign, will be both to preserve and grow the community while also allowing for the rise of affinity groups, whether geographical, professional or what have you, with the eventual aim of having members of these groups engaging in politics in the offline world.

Second, if ElBaradei does actually run, organization and the “ground game” will obviously be crucial in getting out the vote, mobilizing supporters, etc. Doing some grassroots or netroots organization now, to identify potential leaders and, more than anything else, to create a solid constituency for change, will obviously be a big help. Even if he doesn’t run, organizing around his espoused goals is a worthy goal in itself.

Third, it has quickly become the conventional wisdom that the long arm of the regime can’t touch ElBaradei himself. One still outstanding question is how the regime will react in the face of what it will inevitably see as “provocations” (like breaking the emergency law) that will occur if his supporters do organize. In short, how far does ElBaradei’s security umbrella extend? Our guess is that the regime wouldn’t hesitate to arrest people if they actually felt threatened, but that ElBaradei’s supporters will be given more leeway than other groups that aren’t headed by internationally respected figures, because the good doctor has a megaphone that these other groups don’t have, and like everyone else, the regime abhors bad press.

The bottom line is that we think ElBaradei is naive to think that the power of his ideas alone will lead Egypt to become a social democratic country, and believe that it will take some prodding and testing of limits. The airport greeting was only the first instance of this, and was somewhat insulated by the presence of cameras and ElBaradei himself. We’re more interested to see what will happen when a group of supporters organizes a literacy program in Qalyubiya or a neighborhood cleanup in Agouza.

None of this is nuclear science, of course, and we’re leaving huge questions open, like how to organize the majority of Egyptians who aren’t online. But we do think that organizing and directing the tremendous outpouring of energy that has occurred in the wake of ElBaradei’s return will be decisive in determining whether the movement fizzles out, confined to the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate, or becomes something larger.

As the Brotherhood or al-Aswani might say, “التنظيم هو الحل”