CAIRO – Mohamed
Morsi, Egypt’s
first-ever elected civilian president, recently granted himself sweeping
temporary powers in order, he claims, to attain the objectives of the
revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. But the decrees incited
strong opposition from many of the revolutionary forces that helped to
overthrow Mubarak (as well as from forces loyal to him), with protests erupting
anew in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square.
Morsi has thus been put in the odd position of having to defend his decision
against the protesters while simultaneously making common cause with them. “I
share your dream of a constitution for all Egyptians and with three separate
powers: executive, legislative, and judicial,” he told his opponents. “Whoever
wants Egyptians to lose this opportunity, I will stop him.” So, was Morsi’s
“auto-coup” necessary to realize the revolution’s avowedly democratic goals?
The new Constitutional Declaration,
the Revolution Protection Law, and the new presidential decrees have several
aims:
·
To remove the public prosecutor, a Mubarak-era holdover who failed to convict
dozens of that regime’s officials who had been charged with corruption and/or
abuse of power;
·
To protect the remaining elected and indirectly elected institutions (all of
which have an Islamist majority) from dissolution by Constitutional
Court judges (mostly Mubarak-era holdovers);
·
To bring about retrials of Mubarak’s security generals;
·
To compensate and provide pensions for the victims of repression during and
after the revolution.
While most Egyptians may support
Morsi’s aims, a dramatic expansion of presidential power in order to attain
them was, for many, a step too far. Given Egypt’s
extreme polarization and distrust between its Islamist and secular forces,
Morsi should have anticipated the protests. Suspicion of the powerful, after
all, has been one of the revolution’s animating factors. Another is a
“zero-sum” attitude: any achievement by Morsi is perceived by his opponents as
a loss.
The anti-Morsi forces are sharply
divided ideologically and politically. Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, a
liberal reformer, has little in common with Ahmed El-Zind, the head of the
Judges Club and a Mubarak loyalist. But the anti-Morsi forces that backed the
revolution regard the price of cleansing the judiciary as too high, arguing
that the constitutional declaration will lead to dictatorship.
Indeed, the declaration protects
presidential decrees from judicial review (although Morsi stipulated that it
pertains only to “sovereignty” matters, and stressed its temporary nature). It
also gives the president emergency-like power to fight vague threats, such as
those “endangering the life of the nation.” Only if the new draft constitution
is upheld in a popular referendum on December 15 will these provisions be
annulled.
But the opposition factions have not
been adhering to democratic principles, either. Mostly comprising electoral
losers and remnants of Mubarak’s regime, some aim to topple Morsi, not just get
him to backtrack on his decree. ElBaradei, for example, “expects” the army to
do its national duty and intervene if “things get out of hand” – hardly a
compelling democratic stance, given the army’s track record.
Morsi’s decrees have undoubtedly
polarized Egyptian politics further. The worst-case scenario is street clashes
between pro- and anti-Morsi hardliners. Historically, such clashes have often
sparked civil war (for example, Spain
in 1936 or Tajikistan
in 1992) or brutal military coups (as in Indonesia
in 1965 and Turkey
in 1980).
For Morsi and his supporters, it was
imperative to neutralize the Constitutional Court judges, whose ruling last
June dissolved the first freely elected, post-revolution People’s Assembly (the
parliament’s lower house). According to the Morsi camp, the politicized Court
intended to dissolve the Consultative Council (the upper house) and the
Constitutional Assembly, as some of its judges publicly hinted. Likewise, the
sacked public prosecutor had failed to present any solid evidence against those
of Mubarak’s security chiefs and officers who were accused of killing
protestors, leading to acquittals for almost all of them.
As a president who was elected with
only a 51.7% majority, Morsi needs to be sensitive to the demands of his
supporters, mainly the Islamists and revolutionaries victimized by the security
forces. But, for many revolutionaries, there were other ways to sack a tainted
prosecutor and cleanse the judiciary. For example, a new law regulating the
judiciary has been a demand of the revolution since its early weeks.
For Morsi, the dilemma was that the Constitutional
Court could strike down the law, rendering the
effort meaningless. He had already backed off twice: once in July 2012, when he
abandoned his effort, under pressure from the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces, to reinstate the elected parliament; and once when he tried to remove
the public prosecutor by making him Egypt’s
ambassador to the Holy See.
Morsi’s “Constitutional Declaration”
was a decisive – though undemocratic, polarizing, and thus politically costly –
step to break the impasse. And, while such decrees have led to dictatorships,
not democracies, in other countries undergoing political transition, none had a
politicized judicial entity that played the role of spoiler in the
democratization process.
Indeed, almost two years after the
revolution began, Egypt’s
security forces have not been reformed in any meaningful way. Now, Morsi, in
his effort to force out the prosecutor, will have to avoid opening another
front with the Mubarak-era security generals, whom he will need to protect
state institutions and maintain a minimum level of public security.
The security sector may, it seems,
emerge from this crisis as the only winner. It will enforce the rule of law,
but only for a price. That price will be reflected in the constitution, as well
as in the unwritten rules of Egypt’s
new politics. This constitutes a much more serious and lasting threat to Egypt’s
democratization than do Morsi’s temporary decrees.
埃及的民主獨裁者？
開羅—埃及有史以來首位民選總統穆罕默德·穆爾西最近授權自己暫時掌握一切大權，他聲稱這樣是為了實現推翻穆巴拉克獨裁的革命的目標。但這一指令煽起了在推翻穆巴拉克過程中做出貢獻的諸多革命力量（包括忠於他的力量）的強烈反對，開羅解放廣場爆發新的游行示威。
於是，穆爾西陷入了奇怪的境地：他不得不捍衛自己受示威者反對的決定，與此同時，他又要與示威者志同道合。“我和你們一樣，夢想有一部屬於全體埃及人民的憲法和行政、立法、司法的三權分立。”他對反對者說，“不管是誰，若他希望埃及人失去這一機會，我將阻止他。”那麼，穆爾西的“自動政變”（auto-coup）是實現革命的公開目標——民主的必要條件嗎？
新憲法宣言、革命保護法（Revolution Protection Law）和新總統令的目標包括：
· 解除公訴人職務，他是穆巴拉克時代的遺留官員，沒能証明受腐敗和/或濫用權力指控的穆巴拉克政權官員的罪行。
· 保護尚存的選舉和間接選舉機構（均由伊斯蘭教徒佔多數）不被憲法法院法官（大多為穆巴拉克時代遺留官員）宣布解散。
· 對穆巴拉克的安全將官進行複審。
· 為革命期間和革命之後被壓迫的受害者提供補償和養老金。
大部分埃及人或許支持穆爾西的目標，但在很多人看來，為了達到這些目標而大幅擴張總統權力步子邁得太大了。埃及伊斯蘭教徒和世俗勢力之間嚴重兩極分化，彼此互不信任，穆爾西應該料到會造成示威。畢竟，懷疑權力一直是革命活力的來源之一。另一個因素是“零和”觀點：穆爾西的成就在反對者看來就是損失。
反穆爾西陣營的思想和政見是顯著分裂的。諾貝爾獎獲得者、自由派改革者巴拉迪與法官俱樂部（Judges Club）頭目、忠於穆巴拉克的辛德（Ahmed El-Zind）幾無相同之處。但支持革命的反穆爾西陣營認為清洗司法系統的代價太大，他們指出，憲法宣言將導致獨裁。
事實上，憲法宣言保護總統指令不受法官裁決影響（儘管穆爾西表示這只包括“主權”問題，而且隻是權宜之計）。憲法宣言還授予總統類似緊急情況的權力應對模糊的威脅，比如那些“威脅國家安全”的活動。只有在新憲法草案於12月15日的公投中獲得群眾支持，這些權力才會被取消。
但反對派也不符合民主原則。他們大部分是選舉中的失敗者和穆巴拉克政權遺老，其中一些人的目標是推翻穆爾西，而不僅僅是要他收回成命。比如，巴拉迪“希望”軍隊行使其國家責任，在“事態失控”時予以干預——給定埃及軍隊的歷史記錄，這絕非令人矚目的民主立場。
穆爾西的指令毫無疑問讓埃及政壇進一步兩極分化了。最壞的情況是支持和反對穆爾西的強硬分子發生街頭火並。從歷史上看，這類火並通常導致內戰（比如1936年的西班牙和1992年的塔吉克斯坦）或殘酷的軍事政變（比如1965年的印尼和1980年的土耳其）。
對穆爾西及其支持者來說，中立憲法法院法官是必要的，他們在去年6月的判決解散了革命後首個自由選舉選出的國民大會（議會下院）。據穆爾西陣營的說法，政治化的憲法法院傾向於解散咨詢委員會（議會上院）和制憲大會，這是一些法官公開暗示的。類似地，被解職的公訴官沒有拿出任何有力証據証明被指控殺戮示威者的穆巴拉克的安全主管和官員的罪行，導致他們幾乎全被無罪釋放了。
穆爾西僅以51.7%的多數優勢當選總統，他應該對支持者的需求頗為敏感，其支持者大部分是伊斯蘭教徒和受安全部隊迫害的革命者。但是，對許多革命者來說，解除腐化檢察官、清洗司法系統還有別的方式。比如，革命從最初幾周提出了建立新的監督司法部門的法律的要求。
對穆爾西來說，困難在於憲法法院可以宣布法律無效，讓其努力泡湯。他已經兩次遭遇阻擊：一次是2012年7月，他在武裝部隊最高委員會的壓力下放棄了恢復民選議會的努力﹔另一次是他試圖通過任命公訴官為埃及駐羅馬教廷大使解除其職務時。
穆爾西的“憲法宣言”是打破僵局的決定性步驟——儘管這一步不民主、可能造成兩極分化，從而政治代價沉重。此外，儘管這樣的指令在其他經歷政治過渡的國家導致了獨裁而不是民主，但沒有一個國家存在破壞民主化進程的政治化的司法實體。
事實上，在革命爆發幾近兩年後，埃及安全部隊仍沒有發生有意義的改革。如今，試圖逼退公訴官的穆爾西將不得不避免向穆巴拉克時代遺留安全將官二次開戰，他需要他們保護國家制度、維持最低水平的公共安全。
安全部門也許是此次危機中唯一的贏家。它將推行法治精神，但這樣做不是沒有代價的。這一帶價將反映在憲法中，也將反映在埃及新政局的不成文規定中。與穆爾西的暫時性指令相比，這是埃及民主化進程所面臨的更嚴峻、更長久的威脅。