Is It A U-Turn Or Just A Simple Adjustment ?

Brahim Guizani, Ph.D. Economist March, 2013 At their aftermath, it is intriguing to analyze and try to explain the elections outcome that have been taking place in the so-called Arab Spring countries, namely; Tunisia and Egypt. The importance of these polls comes not only from their relatively transparency and internationallyrecognized success but also from their results and the potential subsequent effects of these elections on the future of the two almost sixty-year-old republics. In fact, the elected members of the Constituent assembly (the National Constituent Assembly, NCA) in the case of Tunisia and the parliament (the lower and the upper houses) in the case of Egypt have1 the charge to write new constitutions for both countries after the previous ones were put to an end after the peoples uprisings in January and February 2011. According to many international observers, the election processes in both countries have been, free, fair and without major frauds and this for the first time since their independence. The remarkable outcome of this polity process and its underlying public discussions, at least for the time being, is not the constitution itself in terms of design and substance but about its writers. Indeed, in both countries the main founding fathers of the second republics seem to be coming from the same political school; a school whose ideology identification is still not a subject of consensus among specialists whether they come from inside or outside the Arab World. In the mass media we find several appellations for this school; namely, the Religious, the Islamists, the Fundamentalists, the Conservatives or the Traditionalists. This political school is usually opposed to the so-called, the Modernist School, which at its turn a subject to various appellations, i.e, the Reformist or the Secularist school.2In the following analysis I will use the terms the Traditionalist as opposed to the Modernists which I believe are less subject to disagreements, vagueness and criticism.

1 For Egypt, the new Constituent is already written and was approved by a sufficient majority of the
electors. 2 Like some scholars such as professor Bernard Lewis I believe that this lack of consensus about appellations is attributed to the fact that these appellations were simply and dryly imported from the European political literature without any sufficient intellectual effort to adapt them to the indigenous specific contexts.

The intriguing question that I am going to grasp some answers for is the following: Why in both countries, large part of the citizens chose the Traditionalists and not the Modernists to build the premises of their Second Republics? To find some clarifications about this question, I believe that one needs to have a deep look into the modern history of these two Arab-Mediterranean countries. According to the Princeton University historian and Orientalist Bernard Lewis, Tunisia and Egypt were the main (if not the sole) countries in the Arab World that, as early as the 19th Century, have apprehended the need for crucial and urgent reforms in their longtime wellestablished political, economical and social premises. These reform processes focused firstly on the military and then propagated to other fields. Hundreds of students were sent to the prestigious European academies and many Europeans were invited to participate and supervise the ongoing change in both countries. Albeit these reforms were considered as relatively too late and sometimes very slow, especially in the political arena, historians and observers agree that they were taken thoughtlessly without any clear, well-planified and widely-accepted schemes. These reforms were usually imposed from above by the political elite, sometimes with disdain, indifference and without any regard to the commoners customs and habits. As Bernard Lewis has pointed out, the so-called Modernization was principally of a material and superficial aspect (principally in the military, apparel, constructions and infrastructure fields). In other words, this modernization has been, essentially, a facade rather than a convinced and a popularly-embraced philosophy. Obviously, this confusion and depthlessness in the reform policies have clichd them in the general public consciousness as a Westernization rather than a Modernization.1 Being consciously and philosophically rejected by a large group of the society has considerably weakened the modern reforms making them standing on very fragile pillars that depended enormously on the regimes authoritarianism and despotism. Note that the most advanced laws related to the women rights and gender equality were enacted by two previously authoritarian and secularist regimes; namely Tunisia and Iraq.

1 This remark was emphasized by Bernard Lewis in some of his writings such as his best-seller What
Went Wrong Oxford University Press; 4th edition edition (December 2001).

The obvious and indisputable failure of the post-independence state in the economic development and the establishment of impartial Justice1 and equal opportunities has, increasingly, weakened the pillars of the Modernization temple in Tunisia and Egypt. The society in both countries have become more and more skeptical about, not only the ruling elite accused of, corruption, despotism and being merely western puppets, but whatever policy and/or regulation, consciously and subconsciously, associated with this ruling elite. Anecdotally, after the heads of state were toppled, some voices in both countries supported the amendment of the women rights laws because, according to them, they were associated to the old regime, in the case of Tunisia, or to the ousted presidents wife in the case of Egypt. As a consequence of this fragile framework that hosted the modernization reforms, peoples in both Arab states (and potentially the other Arab states) have become increasingly ready and willing for a change at the top level of the authority. The alternative was found in the Traditionalists shores. As their literature points out, especially in its early stage, the Traditionalists were most of the time suspicious, reluctant and unpleased with the modernization reforms conducted in Tunisia and Egypt and they built their rhetoric on the criticism and sometimes the misrepresentation of these reforms to the commoners. Note that, unlike the Modernists who were commanding from their ivory tower, the Traditionalists are more connected to the populace through several ways such as the mosque institution and charity. Historically, the messengers of Traditionalist movement have increasingly become more and more apparent in the street and the media after the so called Setback and the humiliation of the Six-Day-War in June 1967 (designated in the Arabic political literature as Naksa). According to prominent specialized historians such as the Oxford University professor Eugene Rogan, this defeat has brought to an end the secularist Arab-Nationalism era in the Arab World.2 The glorious Islamic history and the victimhood status were two advantageous privileges that favored the plea of the Traditionalists against their opponents. Ironically, this advantage was concretized in the first experience of the most modern way to choose rulers; i.e., the democratic and free elections. It appears clear, therefore, that 1) the confused and the disorderly Modernization process initiated since the 19th Century, sometimes against the will and the blessings of the 1 I prefer using the word Justice rather than Democracy because I agree with some political scholars,
such as Francis Fukuyama, who says that democracy is not always an optimal and an efficient solution for societies that do not meet its prerequisites, like Tunisia and Egypt in their early post-independence epoch. 2 Eugene Rogan The Arabs: A History, Basic Books; First Edition edition (November 3, 2009)

public; 2) the despotic, nepotistic and corrupt regimes of the post-independence state; and 3) the victimhood advantage of the Traditionalists, have all played a major role in the fall of the socalled Secularists/Modernists parties and the ascension of their opponents; the Religious/Traditionalists parties in the first free and democratic elections of the Arab Spring countries, namely; Tunisia and Egypt . Consequently, the obvious question that one can ask is the following: Is it a U-turn in the Modernization path, as many reformist hardliners warn against, or it is just an adjustment of an uncontrolled and not-well apprehended reformation with the indigenous culture, as the public discourse of the Traditionalists is permanently assuring ? Only the future is capable to answer this question.