EGYPT: NOW THE HARD PART

  • by Emma Bonino and Saad Eddin Ibrahim
  • Inter Press Service

This is a very delicate period for Egypt. Confrontations between the secular-liberal front and the Islamist front, broadly understood, are growing increasingly polarised and often violent. A not always visible rift has opened between the student movement and the military, which is now often seen not as the guarantor of the people's demands for freedom and justice but as part of the old regime fighting for its survival. Peaceful protests are now banned and the press is muzzled, write Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate, and Saad Eddin Ibrahim, founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies.

In this analysis, the authors write that another worrisome aspect of the democratisation process is the so-called "transitional justice", or the procedures adopted to try exponents of the old regime accused of a range of crimes. Mubarak, his wife (free on bail), their two children, as well as a series of ex-ministers and pillars of the old ruling class have been arrested and charged with corruption, embezzlement, abuse of office, and homicide. The proceedings have taken place with a clear lack of transparency, using ad hoc rules that are anything but certain, and with sudden juridically inexplicable accelerations.

Given that democracy cannot be built on either impunity or vengeance, we believe that the interim government can aid the work of the judiciary by requesting the establishment of an independent international commission to take charge of this process. It is also important that Tahrir Square direct its energies towards upholding the rule of law so that its citizens are placed in a position to participate in the decision-making process as inclusively as possible.

(*) Emma Bonino is vice president of the Italian Senate; Saad Eddin Ibrahim is the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies.

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© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service