Arab rulers haven’t yet officially reacted to the presidential election in Egypt or to its ruling military council’s moves to disassemble the democratic institutions that have been put in place. Arab Gulf rulers have joined Saudi Arabia in an official mourning period to commemorate Saudi Crown Prince Nayef al-Saud, whose death was announced on Saturday. Other countries on Monday were waiting for official election results from Cairo.
Yet people close to the governments in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates say those nations’ leaders are pleased with the Egyptian military council’s order that dissolves the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Parliament and gives the army veto control over the financial and security arms of government.
Arab Gulf rulers are suspicious of the Brotherhood’s rising political fortunes around the Middle East, viewing the group as the most serious threat to their regimes behind Shiite-led Iran.
“It’s about time. [The Egyptian military council] finally made a smart move,” said an Emirati official, referring to the army’s decision to disband Parliament.
With Egypt knocked down as a democratic role model for the region, discouraged democracy activists should instead look to Tunisia as a more realistic benchmark, political analysts in the region say.
“I always tell Arabs: ‘Look at Tunisia,’ ” says Ibrahim Sharqieh, deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center, who routinely meets with politicians of countries including Libya, Yemen and Syria. “There, we are genuinely seeing a pluralistic model emerging.”
Tunisia, the small North African country where the first antiregime protests started in December 2010, never had the friction between military and civil society that Egyptians have had to face.
But Tunisia’s political parties have also sidestepped mistakes that Egypt’s political actors have made. Tunisia boasts a coalition government that pairs the moderate Islamist party Ennahda, winner of the region’s first post-Arab Spring election, with a coalition of secular groups. The head of state is a former human-rights activist.
Ennahda’s victory immediately prompted fear and loathing among Tunisia’s secular elite, though the party is considered the most progressive Islamic movement in the region. But Ennahda’s leaders rejected the winner-take-all mentality that some analysts say set Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood on a collision course last week with the army and supporters of the old regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
The Tunisian party gained more respect this spring when the co-founder of the movement, religious scholar Rachid Ghannouchi, refused calls by extremists to make Shariah, or religious law, the basis of the new constitution. The national interest relies on consensus, “not narrow partisanship,” he said in a speech last month.
So far, Tunisia’s political reforms haven’t been met by the same backlash among traditional authoritarian Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf that has greeted Egypt’s democratic experiment.
Egypt’s influence over the region’s revolutions is likely to remain small. Instead, internal issues such as security and shaky economics will be more significant for Tunisia, Yemen and Libya on their road to reform, according to political analysts.
“Economics is what can threaten the entire democratic reform model for the region,” said Mr. Sharqieh. “Protesters were motivated in part by economic frustration. They want to see the fruits of change and democracy.”
It remains unclear whether other Arab nations can help jump-start what increasingly looks like a stalled political experiment in Egypt, or if Egypt’s political personalities are willing to consider the formula of political inclusiveness that Tunisia has adopted.
Mr. Ghannouchi, the founder of Ennahda, flew to Cairo this month ahead of this past weekend’s presidential runoff to urge Egyptian Islamic political leaders, including the Muslim Brotherhood, to join forces with secular parties.
He stressed that the fate of the democratic experiment depended on coalitions and compromise. According to those who took part in the meetings, the Brotherhood gave no indication they were ready to shake off their mistrust of Egypt’s secular and centrist groups.
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The Wall Street Journal