The Road to the Future Runs Through Reconciliation

News from the Egyptian Street and Media Translated Without Comment from Arabic into English As a Public Service
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In Cairo, the Council of State adopted earlier this month a historic judicial ruling.  It stated that former members of the now defunct Democratic National Party (DNC) (the one party which ran Egypt under Mubarak) were eligible to compete as independents or members of newly-formed parties in the parliamentary elections to be held later this November.

The ruling signaled that the Egyptian Revolution, in spite of anxiety about the future role of the SCAF (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) in Egypt's governance, is shunning revenge.  It was a declaration of revolutionary modernity whereby the Tahrir uprising is seeking to be inclusive of all Egyptians.  What added to the significance of the action taken by the Council of State is that its ruling overturned a prior judgment by a lower court in Mansoura (the Delta, west of the Suez Canal) which banned all those who belonged to the DNC from all forms of political participation.  The lower court has reasoned that the DNC, having been the tool of "political corruption" (i.e. dictatorship) under the Mubarak regime, all of those who carried its membership card were culpable.

It is to be noted here that one of the first acts of the January 25 revolutionaries was to burn to the ground the headquarters of the DNC, a magnificent building overlooking the Nile.  With that building went the hypocritical sign on it that declared to all Egyptians, "We Are for You."  Interpretation by the Egyptian masses: "They Are Not for Us."

The Deputy President of the Council of State, Dr. Mahmoud El-Attaar, in explaining the legal underpinning of that historic act of national reconciliation referred to an earlier decision by Egypt's High Constitutional Court issued on June 1, 1986.

In that decision the Constitutional Court nullified the constitutionality of an earlier law adopted in 1978 through a plebiscite declaring all those who belonged to any political party prior to the 1952 Revolution (the Nasser Coup d'etat) are disenfranchised.  The reasoning for the 1978 law was the same as the reasoning for the ruling of the lower court (in Mansoura) which was stricken out of the books by the Council of State in November 2011, namely: corrupting political life.

But the giants of the Egyptian judiciary and the great judicial publicists like the late Dr. Waheed Raafat and the late Dr. Farouk Abdel-Barr, who belonged to the school of our beloved and departed Dr. Al-Sanhouri objected to the 1978 law, disregarding the results of that plebiscite as pure dictatorial manipulation of the popular will.

The line of Egyptian judicial continuum from nullifying the law of 1978 to striking down the ruling of a lower court in Mansoura was as follows: "These laws deprive Egyptian citizens from exercising their civil and political rights under the Constitution."  It went on to say in the words of Counselor Mahmoud El-Attaar: "That deprivation is very broad in nature, and is based not on specific inculpation of political corruption, but on theory and suspicion not anchored in a specific legal provision."

Nothing could explain the wrongful disenfranchising of a broad sector of Egyptian society under the recently-abrogated ruling, like providing the case of one member of the now dissolved Egyptian Parliament.  It is the case of House member Alaa Makady, Number 333, of Samalloot, province of El-Minya, in upper Egypt, and one of our Regional Representatives of SUNSGLOW - Global Training in the Rule of Law.

Mr. Makady had occupied that parliamentary seat from 2005 to 2010 succeeding to a long line of the Makady family who were always voted in by the public to that seat since 1958.  The Makadys are a proud clan which played throughout modern Egyptian history a critical role in the independence of Egypt from Great Britain and in the development of economic, political, and social life in that part of the great southern Egypt, called Al-Ssaeed.  I have personally witnessed the results of their charitable contributions to the poor in their area of the Province of El-Minya, and their incessant work for interfaith harmony between Muslims and Christians/(Coptic) in southern Egypt.

The Makadys role in Muslim/Coptic harmony has no clear parallel in the Nile Delta (Northern or Lower Egypt) for one simple reason.  Al-Ssaeed works on the basis of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) which we, as law professors in America, teach in law schools.  Upper Egypt acts on Coptic-Muslim disputes, which usually implicate land boundaries rather than religion, on the basis of inter-clan conciliation.  The Nile Delta is not so deeply engaged in that quick dispute resolution mechanism which costs very little and lasts for generations.  I have personally made presentations before the Makady - created "The National Society for Human Rights" where Coptic priests sat in large numbers, next to Muslim Sheikhs, as brothers.

Alaa Makady won his family seat in 2005 not as a DNC member, but as an independent.  So how can he be prevented from exercising his civil and political rights only because he sat in a parliament, now dissolved, which was dominated by the DNC.  I asked Alaa by phone: "Are you now going to run as an independent?"  His answer was a "No" with a hearty El-Minya/Samalloot laughter of satisfaction!!