• A democratic experiment in Palestine -   May Jayyusi

• The winds of change -   Daoud Kuttab

• Lebanon: where democratic values thrive best -   Habib C. Malik

Morocco: the picture is not that rosy
 Aboubakr Jamai

When asked in an interview about the nature of the Moroccan regime, King Mohammed VI replied that it is a democratic executive monarchy--an oxymoronic definition that reflects the quandary of a monarchy that would like to pose as progressive without relinquishing its powers.

Since his accession to the throne, Mohammed VI has made gestures suggesting a democratic-minded monarch. He permitted the return of Abraham Serfaty, an exiled arch-opponent of his late father, Hassan II. He released Abdeslam Yassine, the leader of one of the most popular Islamist movements in the country, after ten years under house arrest. He fired Driss Basri, the minister of interior considered Hassan II's right hand. He also organized elections that were only marginally contested as unfair. He improved the legal status of women by passing a new family code. He set up a commission in charge of investigating past human right abuses and compensating their victims.

Aboubakr Jamai is the editor of Le Journal Hebdomadaire in Casablanca

The Palestinian legislative elections present the paradox of a model election won by an Islamist party under conditions of an occupation that the victorious party is committed to resist. The prime minister-designate of this party, speaking in impeccable democratic terms, commits publicly to rebuilding the Palestinian political order on the basis of pluralism and the peaceful rotation of power. In a place as invested as Palestine by so many different political players and conflicting agendas, what were the conditions that allowed free elections to take place successfully in occupied Palestine as opposed to other Arab countries?

Although the Palestinian situation is singular, the transformations within Hamas are echoed by similar developments in other Islamist political parties in the Arab region that to various degrees have picked up the democratic discourse and are staking their political development on processes of democratic contestation and electoral competition. Broadly, this confidence in entering the democratic field has been made strategically possible because these parties can approach the electoral process having secured a broad social base and constituencies whose aspirations for social and economic justice, as well as a minimum sense of national dignity in dealings with the outside world, they can represent.

In contrast to many Arab regimes whose legitimacy is admittedly thin but that are institutionally entrenched and armed with an array of repressive mechanisms (witness the parliamentary elections in Egypt) that keep them in power, the Palestinian political order established by the Oslo process was fatally flawed. It instituted a dual structure of powers that, in disenfranchising Palestinian citizens of their right of self-determination, ultimately corroded the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority since its accountability was constructed vertically to the Israeli occupation and to the international order. (Hence the constant demands on the PA to fulfill its "peace" obligations.)

The breakdown of the peace process and the fierce Israeli onslaught revealed an "empty space" of power and allowed Hamas to step in. The issues, both national and social, that drive the growth of Islamist parties in the region became intensified under the direct and acute conditions of Israeli occupation. Under such conditions the dismal failure of the PA regime in the paradoxical task of state-building while attempting national liberation meant, in the words of political theorist William Connelly, that a "crack in the very efficacy of power" had taken place. The crisis of a Palestinian political system monopolized by Fateh and riddled with corruption, latent throughout the Oslo years, now came fully out in the open. This opened up the space for a clear articulation of Palestinian demands for reform on which there was across-the-board consensus. The fact that both Israel and the Quartet took up the issue of reform and conditioned progress in the political process on it as a way of bringing Yasser Arafat to heel, should not conceal the fact that the issue was a priority on the internal Palestinian agenda and was widely advocated by all sectors of Palestinian society.

For the external players, especially the US, the demand for reform became one with the declared mission of democratizing the Middle East. It is interesting to recall that the US itself insisted on the elections taking place on time despite the many voices in Fateh who demanded and indeed attempted to get them postponed or cancelled. The US also managed to restrict Israeli intervention in the process. What for the US was meant to showcase a success of its self-appointed mission backfired badly.

Indeed, with the ascendancy of Hamas and the continuing fragmentation of Fateh, the need for the re-legitimation of the political system became a pressing need for President Mahmoud Abbas himself. The elections were the only way that the impasse in the system could be broken. In order to achieve their purpose of legitimating the political order, the elections had to be fair and had to be seen to be fair. In fact, against the organized strength of Hamas, Fateh could not have gotten away with attempts at falsifying the results. It is this confluence of factors that ultimately ensured a fair and free election.

This democratic experiment is fraught with dangers both for Hamas and for Palestinian society. The emergence of Hamas as a successful contender for political power (and ultimately for political hegemony) is dependant on different factors, many outside its own control. The appeal of Hamas lay not simply in its successful combination of a national and religious agenda but at a deeper level stemmed from a standpoint of ethicality that could unite both. Against the corrupt reality of Palestinian politics post-Oslo, they could only win.

However, if this experiment as a democratic one is to succeed, it can only do so through the reformulation of a joint national program that can successfully withstand external pressures and defend Palestinian rights, as well as clearly demarcate the democratic basis of a pluralist society based on equality of citizenship and guaranteed civil freedoms.- Published 23/2/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

May Jayyusi is executive director of Muwatin, the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy.

On the surface, the landslide victory of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, in Palestinian legislative elections last month has not reflected directly on democracy in Jordan or the wider Arab world. But there is no doubt this political earthquake will eventually be considered an important milestone by Arab democracy activists.

The most obvious effect of Hamas' victory has been within the various Islamic movements in the Arab world and specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, which sees the victory of its brethren in Palestine as its first real success story. That success, combined with Brotherhood activists in Egypt who did well in the recent Egyptian elections, and their comrades in Jordan where the Islamic Action Bloc has 17 out of 110 members of parliament, has stiffened the backbone of their outlawed Syrian fellows in the face of the authoritarian Syrian regime.

For most Arab regimes, the victory of Hamas registers high on their worry index because it strengthens the chances of such regimes being democratically overthrown by their own Islamists. In this regard, a strong argument has been made that the resurrection of the cartoon controversy was triggered by autocratic regimes that wanted to show their constituencies that they are as much defenders of Islam as the people of Palestine. This argument is supported by the fact that the issue was re-launched by Arab ministers of interior, led by the Saudis, requesting an apology from the Danish prime minister.

Irrespective of Hamas, however, democratic reform is ongoing in spite of ruling regimes. The overall effect of the information revolution has weakened attempts by governments to control the flow of information to their own citizens. The American-led western push for democracy, coupled with the fact that the US is the overwhelming power in the world and especially in the Middle East, has resulted in democratic reform overriding all other issues.

Liberal and intellectual forces in the Arab world have for some time been divided. On the one hand, there is a strong desire for political change and more open societies. At the same time, reform was resisted for as long as it was seen as being an imported or imposed value from the West or Israel. With Hamas' election victory, one of the most anti-American and anti-Israeli forces has been seen to use the democratic process to advance politically, and that objection has been shattered.

But as political Islam has come to be seen as the only viable alternative to despotic, secular regimes in the Arab world, the discussion among democracy supporters too has shifted. There is concern about the potential that the election process will be delayed or stopped completely once Islamic forces take over. At the same time, there is hope that the process of taking power itself will contribute to the moderation of various Islamist groups, thus helping create a serious internal debate in Arab society that should be generally beneficial to society.

Some intellectuals are also hoping that, with the rise of Islamist groups, theoretical differences among them will become more marked. These thinkers hope for the rise of some kind of leftwing Islamist movement that will adopt Islam as a general motif but focus its efforts on traditional leftwing concerns of social justice. While some consider such hopes illogical and the idea of a leftwing Islamist movement as a contradiction in terms, proponents of this line of thought point to the example of Christian liberation priests in Latin America who combined Christian theology with socialist ideals.

Whatever ideological groups arise, it is clear that the Arab world will be witnessing many more changes of regime, with or without the use of force.- Published 23/2/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

By now the obvious must have sunk in: introducing democracy successfully to a region with hardly any previous experience of it has of necessity to be a slow process--often exceedingly so. Nearly three years after the invasion of Iraq and several milestones later, including elections and a constitution, that country has barely begun to make headway on the road toward anything resembling liberal democracy. Egypt's legislative elections late last year brought President Husni Mubarak's ruling party back to power, but they also resulted in a strong showing for the Muslim Brotherhood--a fact that caused some with memories of Algeria to wonder skeptically about extremist forces attaining power through the ballot box. With the stunning Hamas win in recent Palestinian elections, these same doubters began to question openly President Bush's policy of democratization aimed at the Arab world.

Prior to these developments, and due mainly to post-9/11 pressures, there had commenced some democratic tinkering in a number of Arab states: Morocco demonstrated political pluralism by electing a variety of parties to its parliament; Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar took bold steps in the direction of broader popular representation; Yemen forged ahead not only with an elected multiparty legislature but with directly elected municipal officials, as did Saudi Arabia also on the municipal level; and Kuwait's National Assembly was directly elected as well, with the strong possibility that it will include women the next time round.

If the formal side of democracy (elections, campaigns, voting and legislative assemblies) is the deciding criterion, then democratization of the region can be said to be underway in earnest. If, however, democracy's substance (human rights, individual and group freedoms, openness, mutual acceptance, a free opposition, transparency, accountability, and the rule of law) is the true measure, then the Arab world, with its beleaguered liberals caught between cunning authoritarian rulers and determined Islamist extremists, still has a very long way to go, and plenty of anticipated setbacks on the horizon.

Well, what then about Lebanon? After all, this is a land that before 1975 enjoyed a robust track record of freedoms, something unprecedented in the Arab east. At no point in its history was Lebanon an authoritarian state. Lebanon's composite society devised a homegrown version of consociational democracy in which the basic political unit was the religious community or denomination--18 of which are still officially recognized by the Lebanese constitution--and where the approach, patterned on the French parliamentary system, was one of forging political consensus among the leading communities within the Lebanese kaleidoscope. Granted this was not Jeffersonian or Westminsterian democracy, but that would be the wrong measure, since the proper context for any comparison ought to be Lebanon's Arab surroundings. Within that Arab context, Lebanon stood out as possessing the freest and most vibrant civil society, the freest media, an array of political parties and groupings with varying platforms and wide mass appeal, a prosperous free enterprise economy featuring laissez-faire commerce and a strong private banking sector, and an advanced set of private educational and medical institutions.

There were high expectations back in the early months of 2024 regarding Lebanon's ability to reclaim its battered democracy after three decades of turmoil and foreign occupation. The country came together on March 14 in an unprecedented mass spectacle of unity and resolve to see Lebanon freed of Syrian hegemony. Syrian troops subsequently departed and parliamentary elections took place later that spring, eventually producing a government that continues to enjoy considerable international backing. So, where is Lebanon's Cedar Revolution one year later?

Regrettably, much of the good will that existed in early 2024 among the Lebanese toward the legacy of the slain Rafiq Hariri has been steadily dissipating, squandered mainly by the very custodians of his Future Movement. They have displayed stubborn heavy-handedness and intransigence while monopolizing, in the name of a dubious majority, political decisions that have purposely excluded significant portions of Lebanon's diverse constituencies. Laying all the blame for Lebanon's ills at the doors of the presidential palace where a Syrian-appointed incumbent still lingers is a poor way of obfuscating the fact that Hariri's heirs believe and act as if political entitlement and the ownership of the wheels of state were their undisputed birthright alone. Today, there is an emerging consensus in Lebanon that rejects the replacement of Syrian domination with an imposed and exclusivist politics aiming to marginalize everyone except those with blue blood under the pretext of "uncovering the truth about Hariri's murder".

Lebanon functions best under consensual democracy; thankfully, the country is roughly balanced among Sunnis, Shi'ites and Christians, with each constituting close to a demographic third. Getting Damascus safely out of Beirut requires sincere factional cooperation as a prelude to national unity, along with sustained international support. Lebanon matters, because President George W. Bush's deeply cherished desire to spread democracy in the Arab world can score its quickest and most qualitative success only there--after which the floodgates may open.- Published 23/2/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org

Habib C. Malik is associate professor of history at the Lebanese American University (Byblos campus).