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Normally, Western leaders would be lining up to deplore a
coup d’etat, but yesterday even William Hague seemed lost for words. As a rule
of thumb, he says, Britain prefers civilian rule. But when asked to condemn the
Cairo coup, he declined. The Arab world’s Twitter accounts, once full of
revolutionary optimism, have turned into a depository of despair. “Egypt has
taught me that democracy is a lie and an elected president is a myth,” wrote
Ahmed al-Husseini, a Sunni preacher from Bahrain. “No parliament, no elections,
no ballot boxes. All lies.”
He has a point. Egypt’s election turned out to be like an
Irish EU referendum: voters could give any answer they liked, as long as it was
the right one. The army didn’t like how things were going, so it has asked
voters to choose again. While the West was celebrating Egypt joining the comity
of democratic nations, Egyptians themselves were sliding into an economic
abyss, with terrifying shortages of fuel, food and security. Sectarian violence
has been thrown into the mix, with persecution of the Coptic Christians
followed by Sunni v Shia strife. The murder rate trebled. Things were falling
apart, which is why the generals were welcomed back.
But the Arab Spring was a demand for freedom, not
necessarily democracy – and the distinction between the two is crucial. Take,
for example, the case of Mohammed Bouazizi, who started this chain of events by
burning himself alive on a Tunisian street market two years ago. As his family
attest, he had no interest in politics. The freedom he wanted was the right to
buy and sell, and to build his business without having to pay bribes to the
police or fear having his goods confiscated at random. If he was a martyr to
anything, it was to capitalism.
All this has been established by Hernando de Soto, a
Peruvian economist who travelled to Egypt to investigate the causes of the Arab
Spring. His team of researchers found that Bouazizi had inspired 60 similar
cases of self-immolation, including five in Egypt, almost all of which had been
overlooked by the press. The narrative of a 1989-style revolution in hope of
regime change seemed so compelling to foreigners that there was little appetite
for further explanation. But de Soto’s team tracked down those who survived
their suicide attempts, and the bereaved families. Time and again, they found
the same story: this was a protest for the basic freedom to own and acquire ras
el mel, or capital.
Bouazizi killed himself after police confiscated all his
fruit and a pair of second-hand electronic scales. This was all he had. He was
a gifted trader; he had hoped to save enough money to buy a car and grow his
business. On the face of it, losing some fruit and a £100 pair of scales seems
like an odd basis for suicide. But having made enemies of the police, Bouazizi
realised he would not be allowed to trade again. His family say he felt his
life had ended and that, if he died for any cause, it should be that the poor
should be able to buy and sell.
For most of the developing world, no such right exists.
In theory, everyone is protected by law. But in practice, the process of
acquiring a legal licence is so riddled with bribery and bureaucracy that only
a small minority can afford to go through with it. To de Soto, this explains
much of world poverty. Step out of the door of the Nile Hilton, he says, and
you are not leaving behind the world of internet, ice machines and antibiotics.
The poor have access to all of these things if they really want it. What you
are leaving behind is the world of legally enforceable transactions of property
rights. These traders do not really break the law – the law breaks them.
Take Fadoua Laroui, a Moroccan mother, whose suicide was
filmed. She explained her reasons before setting herself alight. “I am going to
immolate myself,” she said. “I am doing this to protest against hogra and
economic exclusion.” Hogra means contempt towards small traders, the contempt
which Bouazizi was shown by the police. A similar story was told by the
survivors, and the relatives of the deceased. As Bouazizi’s brother explained
to de Soto: “People like Mohammed are concerned with doing business. They don’t
understand anything about politics.”
Technically, the law covers everyone. But under Hosni
Mubarak, for example, opening a small bakery in Cairo took more than 500 days
of bureaucracy. To open a business in Egypt means dealing with 29 government
agencies. The same story is true throughout the region: the average Arab needs
to present four dozen documents and endure two years of red tape to become the
legal owner of land or business. If you don’t have the time or money for this,
you are condemned to life in the black market: no matter how good you are, you
will never trade your way out of poverty. Arabs are so angry about this that
they are burning themselves alive.
William Hague said yesterday that Egyptians want the
freedom to express their views and choose their governments. Stability, he
said, “comes from democratic institutions”. Yet there has been depressingly
little evidence of this stability in democratic Egypt – as the Saudis are
gleefully pointing out. This sets a terrible example to other fledgling
democracies: that if things get tough, the army can eject the government and
start again. Whoever follows Mohammed Morsi as president will know that, in
effect, he serves at the pleasure of the military.
A few weeks ago, de Soto told the US Congress that the
West has fundamentally misread the Arab Spring and is missing a massive
opportunity. Bouazizi, and the five Egyptians who self-immolated, spoke for 380
million Arabs who lack property rights or any legal protection. This applies to
Britain: if we were to become champions of these people, and demand the
extension of property rights in return for our foreign aid, it could be the
most effective anti-poverty strategy ever devised. And it might make us
millions of new friends in the Arab world.
This is not a new idea, but the revival of an old one. As
Margaret Thatcher once put it, “being democratic is not enough – a majority
cannot turn what is wrong into right”. Freedom, she said, depends on the
strength of the institutions: law and order, a free press, the police and an
army that serves the government rather than supervises it. History is proving
her right – in Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq and now in Egypt. The façade of
democracy can be horribly deceptive; it is the strength of institutions that
decides if nations rise or fall.
Fraser Nelson is editor of 'The Spectator’
See also:
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 5: Gadhafi wealth, March 01, 2011
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 6: Should US jets enter Libya?, March 08, 2011 Unrest in MidEast-Africa 7: Cry for freedom, March 11, 2011
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 8: Bahrain rebellion, March 16, 2011
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 9: Gaddafi falldown, August 24, 2011
Unrest in MidEast Africa 10: Israel-Hamas War 2012, November 26, 2012
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