When the two-month jail term was first handed down by the court to colleague Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of the Egyptian daily Al-Dostour, before he received a Presidential pardon, I asked myself: what did Eissa do to be imprisoned? Was it simply because he is a journalist who wrote a story or an article on a public issue, President Mubarak’ health, or because he is opposed to corruption and tyranny which have become commonplace in the daily lives of Egyptians?
I discovered that the trial of Eissa is a chapter of the exclusion strategy exercised by the Egyptian regime since the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections. Such strategy aimed at excluding judges and opposition political figures such as Ayman Nour, the Muslim Brotherhood, independent journalists and political activists from the political game, attempting to put the lid on the political awakening the country has witnessed over the past four years, and diminishing prospects of a real democratic transition in Egypt.
I am not talking about Ibrahim Eissa as a journalist who has expressed his opinion on a public issue everybody has tackled positively or negatively, but as an Egyptian citizen who has practiced his constitutional right to express his opinion and as a sincere citizen who has a dream of Egypt becoming a strong democratic country.
There is no difference between Ibrahim Eissa, as an Egyptian citizen, and any other citizen being prosecuted simply for expressing his opinion and addressing the state of collapse experienced by Egyptian state institutions, such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Ayman Nour, Khairat El-Shater, Mohamed Ali Bishr, Hassan Malek, Musaad Abu Fagr, and others who are sacrificing their happiness and freedom to see their country free and democratic.
There is also no difference between them and political detainees in Syria such as Michel Kilo, Akram Al-Bunni, Riad Seif, Aktham Naisse, Kamal Al-Labwani or Saudi detainee Matruk Al-Faleh. All of those are mere citizens who have become sacrifices for the authoritarian Arab regimes that live on the wrong side of history and refuse to pay the price of change.
Ibrahim Eissa’s initial indictment will certainly not be the last in Egypt, as long as some arms of the regime insist on keeping the current situation unchanged.
Even if Eissa was going to be imprisoned, this would not have signaled the end of the independent press in Egypt, but on the contrary it would have fuelled fresh impetus to continue its campaign against corruption and tyranny.
The dilemma of authoritarian regimes is that they are stupid, as was the case in the Soviet Union before its collapse when repressive regimes tried to silence the opposition by force, triggering a reaction that was too strong for these regimes to endure under the pressure of popular anger and the erosion of their legitimacy.
The verdict against Ibrahim was a severe embarrassment for the liberal reformist wing within the National Democratic Party whose men claim to defend press freedom and independence.
The initial verdict could have been the embodiment of the deal, which some have talked about a year ago, that Eissa would become a scapegoat for the rest of the other chief editors, such as Adel Hammouda, Abdel Halim Kandil and Wael El-Ibrashi who are facing the specter of imprisonment in the next few weeks.
Khalil Al-anani is an Egyptian expert on political Islam and democratization in the Middle East and is a senior fellow at Al-Ahram Foundation. E-mail: [email protected]
