Two activist conservative U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations were among the seven NGO offices raided by the Egyptian authorities last December 29. The attempts to bring publicity to the work of these organizations by the Egyptian military rulers escalated January 26 , when Sam LaHood and other employees of the International Republican Institute’s program in Egypt were refused permission, at the airport, to leave the country. As the story continues to unfold, the U.S. embassy has now decided to protect some of the NDI and IRI employees in the large embassy compound in Cairo.
NDI and IRI have been repeatedly described in the U.S. press as “pro-democracy groups” Washington Post 12-30-11, NPR 02-05-12) and “democracy-building groups” (New York Times, 1-27-2012; Washington Post, 1-26-12). The groups claim to monitor elections, political party development, and educational work.
But the work of National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) is notorious for supporting anti-democratic elections and the U.S. supported overthrow of democratically elected governments. As Dana Frank of the University of California recently pointed out, NDI and IRI were the only major international organizations who stayed in Honduras to observe the faux November 2009 elections. All other major international observers and most opposition candidates boycotted those elections, after the June 28, 2009 coup that deposed the democratically elected president, José Manuel Zelaya.
Following the coup, the U.S. maintained and even increased military and police financing for Honduras, even as the coup leaders have used police and paramilitary forces to suppress opposition movements and kill their leaders. The October before the elections, while the Lobo administration was pursuing this murderous approach to their opponents, President Obama even went so far as to praise Lobo at the White House for “restoration of democratic practices.” After the elections, U.S. President Obama recognized the winner, Porfirio Lobo, when most Latin American countries would not.
When is an election democratic? That is an important question both for Honduras in 2009 and Egypt right now, in the post-Mubarak era. In the Honduran case, government attacks on opposition groups destroyed their claims to democratic legitimacy among their citizens. NDI and IRI may claim that the elections were free and fair, and the U.S. president may recognize the results, but that does not mean the elections were democratic.
In Egypt during the Arab Spring, military rulers have adopted an approach that attempts to drive a wedge dividing the long-established Muslim Brotherhood from the younger, more secular and more recently organized activists that have made Tahrir Square the center of a democratic movement. As the timing of the elections was debated, the Muslim Brotherhood pressed their advantage as an already well-established organization by pushing for earlier elections.
We have just witnessed the results of those elections, where the younger Tahrir movement leaders were effectively shut out of seats in the legislature, and the Muslim Brotherhood won a near majority of seats. Now we find the Muslim Brotherhood blocking protests by the Tahrir Square activists and even using their security muscle to try to claim Tahrir Square as their own.
Are these democratic elections? Clearly not in the case of Honduras. In Egypt as the Muslim Brotherhood attempts to suppress the protests and other political efforts of many sectors of the Arab Spring revolt, preliminary signs are that the election process failed to catch the democratic practices needed for full representation of competing social groups. However, the failure of elections to do the work of democracy does not mean democracy is dead in Egypt. Far from it. Democracy is much larger than elections, and only time will tell what lies ahead for the democratic impulses of the Arab Spring movement in Egypt.
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