The Regime of Rights and Freedoms in Egypt.

Social and political entrepreneurship might be key to sorting out many of our rights and freedoms problems under the constraints of reality and the nature of our political regime. The proposition might sound idyllic or a bit of a stretch, but in fact it is not as I can probably infer from both my own observations on and hands on experience in matters related to the host of problems—not uncommon in developing countries—that affect our relative freedoms in terms of deliberate twists in legal regulations, monstrous executive, abuse of power, and lack of any parliamentary supervision on government bodies involved with the personal rights and freedoms of citizens. Closely associated with the said problems comes the subject of availability of and accessibility to reliable and authenticated information about exact legal rights, official corridors available for fighting power abuse, the extent of tradition ad religion in law and its application, the legal definitions and rules of the relation between military personnel and civilians. Issues concerning religious and social freedoms form the most opaque areas as far as clarity of law and interoperability of legal codes are concerned. As a legally literate citizen, I can assert that depressing levels of ambiguity engulf any information presented on these subjects, that is, if one could find a source for information in the first place. Putting aside the problems about information, laws and regulations in many cases are taken with a grain of salt by the authorities as was the case during the Nasserite era where laws and regulations were far more coherent and elaborate, yet the authorities disregarded rules like ants.

The industry of information filtration, presentation, and processing into knowledge faces numerous hurdles in the region. Some pertain to structural issues in states closely linked to their dictatorial natures, while others stem from reasons pertaining to culture and education. Thereby knowledge industries which are built on information are underdeveloped. With hard work and persistent research many of such hurdles become surmountable. All the same, in case of information about personal rights and freedoms, extra miles need to be run.

The structure of the Egyptian state is too hybrid, as it involves French, British, Soviet, and American components intertwined in a complex fashion. Another component in the admixture is haphazardness which had started to take shape in the late 50s with Nasser and Heikal’s juvenile endeavours to bring together bits and parts from West, East, socialism, capitalism, Islam ( Arabism in their dictionary) in policy making, national charter, and formation of laws. Later on haphazardness, especially in law making, morphed into orchestrated chaos designed to make way for executive to circumvent law, regulation, and Bureaucratic rules. The trend started with Nasser’s notorious confrontation with the judiciary in 1969. It intensified under the cute president, Mr. Sadat who was fond of using catchy phrases in his speeches like ‘Democracy with fangs’, ‘Everything will be done by and according to the law’. Under Mubarak, haphazardness turned into a matter of course. Naturally, under such conditions accessibility to and availability of consistent or reliable information about rights becomes a hard slog. Taking precautions against abuse, suing power, and accessing upper corridors where authority can be challenged inside such maze which is the regulatory environment are indeed near-impossible.

Law enforcers in Egypt quite often muddle their legally-defined roles with those of a religious morality force commanding good and admonishing against vice. Further, it is commonplace for the enforcers to resort to custom and tradition in settling disputes, and in deciding whether to apply the law in the first place. Turning a blind eye to crimes motivated by tradition is not uncommon. Such state of affairs is part design and part inevitable due to the nature of the 1952 regime. Especially under Mubarak religion was increasingly being used as tool to contain any anti-authoritarian trends in society. The mediocrity of the regime mixed with Mubarak’ indecisiveness limited its capacity to deliver and expand the economy and hence the need for strict control was a priority. The nature of the 1952 regime is culprit as well when it comes to this too organic application of law. The regime comprises a structure made up of village elders, crony capitalists with Soviet outlook on networking, power relations, finance, and organization structure; grassroots business–with dominant norms all over the cultural and business milieu– hostile to modern values, while it harbours an anathema to science despite all the rhetoric about renaissance and enlightenment, and investment in education. With tradition being inextricable from written code, predicting how enforcers will act in a certain situations becomes a non-linear task. Obtaining succinct information about rights under certain circumstances where the boundaries between tradition and law are fluid turns daunting.

How much the value of professionalism is appreciated in society and where it is situated on the rungs of the ladder of criteria employed in evaluation of worth and status have a significant impact on the supply and quality of presented or procured information. Counselling, especially in legal matters, and psychology is indispensable for a balanced and a healthy living in a modern setting. I have in this matter relevant private experiences to share.

Ever since I was maybe ten years old I had started to become independent minded enough to be skeptical about the advice and commands of my parents which I took lightly, while I ventured in stealth to do whatever I wanted or thought was more right. In my late teens and early twenties, I found myself coming up against an array of problems with society which I could not rationalize because sources were above my head. At that point in time, I developed an interest in psychology and started frequenting psychologists. I basically thought of shrinks as just friends with whom I could share details about my life which I wouldn’t have dared to discuss with friends or parents. I also conceived the shrink as an instructor in the discipline of psychology. Other benefits were gained from those folks. For instance, when I was in my 30s I dated an intriguing shrink.

Another use which I extracted from the visits was my realization that social sciences in the Middle East are too much value-laden and that Arab psychologists are confined to a narrow perspectives and quite often fail to accommodate the impact of social complexity, and fragmentation. In other words, they almost invariably happen to be too right-winged, and quite often they infuse their own private sense of what is right and wrong and their values into the different context of client. In this context, I would like to make a detour in order to demonstrate the power of counselling in promoting change. With the introduction of modern social sciences into Middle Eastern academies and universities in the 1920s and 1930s, graduates were, in addition to various other factors, agents of change. Their research, writings, and students who worked with culture, teaching, or parenting of children contributed to the huge change witnessed in the Middle East from the second half of the 19th century up to the 40s, 50s of the 20th century. A quick glance on the history of social sciences in the region would shed light on the tremendous changes that took place in women rights, secular education, political modernization, working conditions, sovereignty of law, etc. The inroads made into the disciplines of sociology and psychology played a major role in modernizing the social infrastructure of the region.

The changes in orientation of social sciences over a century in combination with my case study should point towards the enormous roles played by counselling in modern life. Another point that should be highlighted is how levels of state control, quality and type of government and its orientation affect culture which inputs into the information regime in a region or country. In my own case, it was clear that the engineered chaos and ambiguity of the state organs reflected on the quality of counselling and the quality of information extracted from the professional. All the counselors I have encountered lack any appreciation for or even proper conception of the values of freedoms and rights. Another subtle point about counselling in Egypt pertains to lambs and wolves. With the aforementioned failure of regimes to deliver, they coalesce around rigid structures and develop phobias about change, and, sadly enough, expansion. Thus the regime’s support bases becomes like wolves outfitted in lambs’ clothes, as they dress themselves up as the modern forces in lands of backwardness. My counsellors were of that said sort. In a brazen oxymoron they totally overlooked issues like Democracy, rights, freedoms, generational shifts while they perversely enjoyed playing Tarzan in Africa.

Having gone through psychological counselling to make a case for the state of professionalism writ large, we now move up to the more pertinent subject of legal counselling. All professions all over the globe contain The Good, The Bad , and The Ugly. I personally have known so many lawyers with living consciences and passion for what they think is right. I have also known lawyers who have done away with opportunities for luxury living and dedicating their entire lives for helping out the marginalized and weak. There are many lawyers as well who are just professionals doing their job honestly in return for a bill. The Lee Van Cleeff types abound too. Anyway, producing statistics about the moral levels of lawyers in the region is something way beyond my means and reach, yet what I could assert with reasonable levels of confidence is that culture in a certain nation as well as its political ambience affect all aspects of society including work culture.

In this respect, I find it relevant to mention two examples that are relevant to the last point. The first concerns the point mentioned earlier about the extent of religion and tradition in law and application. The second example goes about political rights. I will start out with issue of cohabitation. For extramarital sex to be criminalized by Sharia, four witnesses must see clearly the penis entering and leaving vagina. The probability for such legal condition to be met is near non-existent. The point of the rule could be about injunctions against public sex, or an enticement of moderation. Moreover, there is not a single mention in Sunni Sharia about cohabitation! For the Twelver shia, there is type of marriage called “Mesyaar” which allows a couple to marry each other for an agreed upon specific period which could be hours. No wonder, stealth cohabitation is widespread among the educated in Tehran. Mesyaar was practiced by Sunni Muslims during the early periods of caliphate, then it phased out because of the embedment of the Islamic civilization in the Mediterranean sphere. What we have mentioned so far concerns legal rules of sharia. However, the Egyptian law is supposedly secular and so it does not incriminate extramarital sex– adultery is defined as marital infidelity– though as stated before application is sometimes organic influenced by tradition and sharia. Hence, as part of the engineered chaos mentioned earlier, Egyptian law includes clauses about debauchery and violating public manners that are interpreted in discretionary manners. Such clauses can be mobilized to incriminate cohabitation. Quite Ironically, such organicity is never used with the rich and powerful who get away with orgies. For people in my status, Authorities think several times before trying to play at my rights. Yet some martial skills are needed to handle intruders and authority figures trying to pull fast ones. Considering the wide connotations of the subject, I inquired about it from several lawyers I knew as friends and never got straightforward reply!

The second example concerns political rights. I once knew a capable professor in an Egyptian college ho denied promotion to the post of dean at the eleventh hour because of report by authorities. The case ended here, but if we supposed hypothetically that the said professor organized a protest, demanding independence of universities, or wrote extensively about the case in press, ambiguity in rules would be pulled in such case and hurled against the protestor who might have been arrested for attempting to launch a coup, or he might have been suspended for vitiating college rules and/or traditions and manners.

Given the circumstances discussed in the article about regime and its rooted policies, work culture, engineered chaos, social and political entrepreneurship would come in handy as an effective tool for promoting political and social rights and freedoms. A group of dedicated lawyers and counsellors could gather up and build a website registered as a law and counselling firm. The website would include all relevant information about legal clauses and cases involving ambiguity and some mischief in clear manners, preferably in near-bulleted formats. The firm would publish in layman’s language periodical articles about controversial legal cases and convoluted and ambiguous clauses. Accessing an article on the site would be through a fee with a membership option. The site would include psychology of teenagers and youth with information about controversial issues in periodic articles. The firm would investigate and publish about cases of power abuse and disappearance. Assigning sessions with a psychologist, or bringing a lawyer to a client would be an an option in return for progressive fees based on a quick assessment of financial status.