CAIRO: A little over half an audience of 160 disagreed with the motion that Egypt was not ready for democracy, at the New Arab Debates on Tuesday, with the motion’s opponents decreasing from 54.8 percent to 51.6 in a pre-debate poll.
“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education,” began the supporter for the motion, Ragia Omran, quoting former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Omran, a human rights lawyer and former election monitor, said she believed the motion expressed the situation in Egypt. “We are not ready for democracy. That does not mean we will not one day come to have it,” she said.
Omran said that education and judicial reform, in addition to restructuring the media and the Ministry of Interior, were necessary for the establishment of democracy.
Although an overhaul of the interior ministry was “one of the goals of the revolution, it has not been fulfilled to date,” she said.
Providing a foundation for her argument, Omran cited the 12,000 military trials conducted in 2011, the 40 percent illiteracy rate, and the imposed LE 500 fine for not voting, as evidence for the unhealthy atmosphere.
Debate moderator and former BBC anchor Tim Sebastian then countered saying that no body suggested democracy was ideal, and that millions had come for the first time in their lives for a vote that wasn’t rigged. “If that is not the birth of democracy, then what is?” he asked.
Omran’s reply was that there wasn’t enough time for political parties to establish themselves in society and canvas the landscape. When Sebastian asked her about the parliament that had just convened, she noted how peaceful protesters were barred from reaching it by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sebastian then asked if that wasn’t the choice of the people, to which Omran agreed but maintained that the ones in parliament who reached the PA through democracy, were not respecting the rights of the others.
Refuting the motion, former ElBaradei campaign-runner and administrator of the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook page, Nadine Wahab, said that she had a different definition of democracy to that of Omran.
“At its fundamental level, [democracy] is all about citizens deciding on, or helping make the decisions that affect their lives … about the food on the table and the sewage in the streets,” she said. “It’s the mechanism through which society decides how it’s going to interact with its citizens.”
She added that claiming that Egyptians weren’t ready to make such decisions was akin to calling “one of the oldest societies on Earth childlike.”
“The question we’re asking is: are we ready?” Wahab asked, saying that the question assumes that at the beginning of a democracy everything will be done properly. “I would venture to say that we have the ability today to actually imagine a democracy that is much greater than what we have seen before.”
Wahab however noted that the end of elections did not mean “going home and giving the system a chance,” which she described as “a reduction of democracy into [an] election.”
“We no longer have to delegate our authority to anyone, and definitely not MPs,” she said, explaining that “western democracy” was limited by the technological confines of the times when it was created, which necessitated authority being given to representatives.
Her solution was a grassroots electronic implementation of democracy, employing crowd sourcing technologies in which local communities vote on their priorities which are then referred to their parliamentary representative, who in turn advocates them on their behalf. This was echoed later during the question and answer session when an audience member noted that perhaps “it was democracy that was not ready for Egypt.”
The argument however was challenged by Sebastian, who reminded Wahab that “while she was dreaming big,” 88 percent of Egypt gave a positive approval rating for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) ruling the country. “Is that evidence of a people who are ready for democracy? Embracing dictators?”
She countered by saying that the numbers were misleading and that they had decreased over time and that the people supported SCAF for fear of the unknown, but not necessarily because they favored them.
When the floor was opened for questions, Naglaa Rizk, an economics professor at the American University in Cairo, asked the panellists to what extent was Egypt’s lack of readiness a function of military rule and institutional corruption on one side, and inadequate education on the other.
Both Omran and Wahab agreed that both sides were important. “One of the major issues with the government right now is that it sees us as being under servitude, when I think it’s the exact opposite. They are public servants, the public does not serve them,” said Wahab.
Carrying on from that argument, came the testimony of Hussein Hammouda, an audience member who described himself as a former state security officer and human rights expert.
According to Hammouda, he was dismissed from the interior ministry and was banned from teaching human rights courses, after which he had participated in the 2011 uprising, and testified before the audience that the ministry still lacked the proper infrastructure that was necessary for a democratic transition.
Another young woman argued with Omran on whether democracy was being established already through protests. “It is democracy. We asked for it, we do it in Tahrir Square!”
Omran said that protesters’ voices were not being heard, especially while SCAF was controlling the major institutions.
For closing arguments, Wahab said that Egyptians were out and screaming for democracy, and that there was no chance that they weren’t ready because they were still fighting for it. On her part, Omran concluded that democracy would not be achieved until SCAF stepped down.
