Saturday, April 2, 2011

Fawda

Madness
When a country is unable to host and secure a preliminary round soccer match, it is not ready to put at stake its entire political future.  That might seem trite and simplistic, but it is the crude reality.

With all due respect to the organization of the protests in January, Egypt is not prepared politically, socially or otherwise for democratic elections to decide its fate.  The country has no culture of acceptance of winning and losing, a fatal flaw in any democratic environment, but especially one where there are no institutional checks and balances to measure the outcome.  Yes, there was a peaceful voting process for the referendum (nb:  not really sure why we had that vote, given many other changes to the constitution were subsequently passed by decree), but there the proscribed outcome was overwhelmingly approved, and the stakes were transient.


Add to this the fact no one really knows the roadmap leading to parliamentary or presidential elections, or how the constitution will be modified going forward, or who will be allowed to run for elected office or what they will stand for, or even how to change any of this to make sense of the situation.

This is not democracy - it is chaos.

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