Democracy Faces Many Challenges in Arab World

Democracy doesn't have a great track record in the Arab World, so why is anyone surprised that the push for democracy in Egypt has run into a military stumbling block?

Tunisia is really the first Arab country where democracy has taken hold after pro-democracy protesters ousted its former "president," Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Nine months later, preliminary elections have resulted in the first real hope for citizen rule there.

But that's the exception, not the rule. Democracy has had a tough experience in the Arab neighborhood.

Democratic elections were held in Palestine in 2005 and 2006, but the country was and is under an Israeli military occupation that doesn't seem to have an ending.

Hamas, the extremist movement that used terrorism and violence to block the peace process and prevent democracy from taking hold, eventually decided to run candidates in the January 2006 elections.

The party won control, but not because the elections were democratic. In fact, the elections were flawed. Instead of having parties hold separate elections to select their leadership before general elections, it was all done under one election event. Hamas took control of the legislature, despite failing to win a voter majority.

When Israel and the United States didn't like the results, they did everything they could to undermine the new government. Palestinian democracy has been in cardiac arrest ever since.

Elections were held in Iraq, but there, too, the results did not satisfy the military occupation and were held hostage for months. Finally, the two sides came together — but not at the election booth, where the selection of leadership is supposed to be decided.

No matter how persuasive the American PR machine, Iraq's elections were flawed, and the results were skewered by outside interests.

Lebanon claims to be a democracy, but everyone knows that it's not. The parliament there is divided on the basis of religion and cleverly labeled a "confessional" system, wherein the three major religions have split up power based on the country's population.

The problem, of course, is that the population census used to divvy up leadership was taken in 1932. The balance between Christians and Muslims has dramatically shifted from a Christian majority to a Muslim majority, but no one wants to officially make the change. The Taif Agreement in 1989 shifted the balance to 50/50, even though everyone knows the Christian population in Lebanon is far below the 50 percent mark.

Under the confessional system, Lebanese Christians continue to hold the office of president, Sunnis the office of prime minister and Shiites the office of speaker of the parliament.

But the real power balance is held by Hezbollah, the extremist Shiite movement, which has the backing of Iran, Syria and Hamas.

There is no democracy in any other Arab country. Several are ruled by monarchs — Jordan and Saudi Arabia, for instance. However, every effort to claim that they are no different than England's monarchy-parliament system falls far short of the minimal test of true democracy. Jordan's King Abdullah II and Saudi King Abdullah are both absolute monarchs, which means they make the real decisions while pretending to give the people a voice through a puppet legislative process.

The Queen of England engages in a lot of pomp and ceremony, but the real power rests with the parliament. That's not the case in Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

Many Arabs dream that one day Arabs will have true democracy, a system under which the people decide, through an election that includes a single vote cast by every man and every woman of age, who their leaders will be.

And their leaders won't be presidents for life or absolute monarchs who call the shots from behind the curtains.

But I have heard from many, Arabs included, that the Arab World is not the West. Arabs live in multi-layered, tribal family systems. In Palestine, they're called Hamoullahs, clans brought together by blood relations and ancestry. Allegiances to religion and ethnicity often take priority over issues, policies or politics. In Iraq, we saw Sunnis vote for Sunnis, Shiites vote for Shiites and Christians vote for Christians.

The essence of true democracy is populations rising above their religious and ethnic divisions.

So why should Egypt be any different? Why should we expect that the people of Egypt will be able to overcome the constraints that have enslaved Arabs everywhere else, except in Tunisia? Tunisia offers hope, but Tunisia is a North African Arab country outside of the heart of the real Arab world. The majority — nearly 98 percent of the population — is of ethnic Berber heritage. And it is 98 percent Sunni Muslim.

Democracy exists in stark conflict with the essence of Arab culture, which is the allegiance to a clan based on religion. And in countries where religious differences define the politics, democracy has no chance. If religious and ethnic divisions are set aside, Arabs could come together.

Egyptians may be going to the polls to vote, but what they create may still be a major question.

Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian American columnist. To find out more about Ray Hanania and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

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