Post editorial:
Egypt's Test for Mr. Bush
Wednesday, February 2, 2005; Page A22
"DEMOCRATIC reformers facing repression, prison or exile can know: America sees you for who you are -- the future leaders of your free country," President Bush said in his inaugural address. "When you stand for your liberty we will stand with you." It didn't take long for that promise to be tested. On Saturday Egyptian police arrested and roughed up Ayman Nour, the dynamic young leader of a new opposition party calling for liberal democracy in that strategic Middle Eastern country. On Monday Mr. Nour was ordered to jail for 45 days on a patently bogus charge of forgery. To Egyptians, his real offense was obvious: offering a moderate democratic alternative to the corrupt dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.
So far, the Bush administration has responded in a way that backs up the president's words. The State Department issued a statement calling Mr. Nour "one of Egypt's most prominent opposition leaders," deploring his arrest and mistreatment, and calling on the government to "reexamine the issue." In private, U.S. officials forcefully raised the case with the Egyptian ambassador in Washington, with the president's office and foreign and interior ministries in Cairo, and with representatives of other Group of Eight countries that joined the United States last year in an initiative to promote democracy in the Middle East. A meeting of the G-8 and the Arab League is scheduled for March 1 in Cairo; that raises the possibility of a U.S. or Western snub of Egypt if Mr. Nour is not released.
In fact, Mr. Mubarak has handed Mr. Bush a golden opportunity. The 76-year-old strongman has been the staunchest opponent of U.S. calls for political liberalization in the Arab world -- an intransigence that most of the Egyptian elite plainly doesn't support. On the same day he dispatched his thugs to beat and shackle Mr. Nour -- the day before Iraq's historic elections -- Mr. Mubarak again hinted that he plans to extend his 24 years in office by six more years by running unopposed in a rigged "referendum" this fall.
In standing up for Mr. Nour, Mr. Bush would be supporting homegrown constitutional reform aimed at the creation of a parliamentary system of government, to be chosen in a fully democratic election. A deputy in the powerless Egyptian parliament for the past decade, the 40-year-old Mr. Nour helped found the Tomorrow Party, which was legally registered just three months ago. Since then he has issued an alternative constitution spelling out a new democratic system and announced a goal of obtaining 1 million signatures from Egyptians in support of it. He also supported a new protest movement called Enough, whose name embodies its message to the Mubarak regime.
Mr. Nour is no radical: He recently said he would support Mr. Mubarak for another term as president if he first agreed to constitutional reform. Neither is he a pet of the United States; he has been a sharp critic of U.S. aid programs. He is the sort of "future leader" who Mr. Mubarak, and many critics of Mr. Bush's pro-democracy policy, claim doesn't exist in Egypt: a secular moderate capable of winning broad support. That, and not forgery, is what landed him in jail -- and it is why the Bush administration has much to gain by rallying to his side. |
