Democracy in Egypt

On Tuesday, we tipped the iceberg of this topic with a discussion about how changing a country's government to democracy can affect them. We mentioned that Democracy works as an opposing force to religion. In a world where there are such thing as Islamists, we must admit that here in America, we are "Christian-ists", in that we use many Judeo-Christian values and laws to "base" our law system upon. We have examined how the diminishing of our very religious based values is due to the fact that our government system is Federalism. We have a three branch government that provides checks and balances so that no one group can have too much power. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights allow for either a strict interpretation or a liberal one that leaves a lot of wiggle room. It’s important to understand that although our society takes a very long time to change, it is easier to change in a democratically run nation because of the “rights” of the people.

The rights of the people caused us to allow for court cases such as Roe v. Wade to take place and for Same-sex marriage to be legal in some states. These are contradictory to the original rules of the Judeo-Christian faith and if we started out as such a nation that can be called “Christian” then what might happen to Egypt with such a system being newly implemented. The Egyptian people have a lot to learn with the government change and “Absorbing such ideals has not been easy since Egypt’s 18-day uprising that ended the three-decade reign of Hosni Mubarak. The ruling military has preferred a speedy transition, forcing Egyptians to learn democracy on the run. A key mistake was that the youthful leaders of the revolution failed to unite behind one pro-democracy candidate before the first round of voting May 23-24.” The Egyptians will have to wait until the next election to try again to elect a pro-democratic president.

The other problem is also is what the people want? Perhaps the people do not like the idea of a democratic government. They can be content with a ruling system that is intertwined with religion, it actually makes them feel safer knowing that their leader is intone with God and that their faith will be upheld as high as the law. The fact that less than half the population even bothered to vote shows the nonchalance or rather the fear that the people feel at the prospect of having a democratic president or voting against the overconfident Muslim Brotherhood who “expected to win outright with more than 50 percent of the vote.”  This battle is far from over and only time will tell how the next events will blow over with the Egyptian people. While they may have conducted a “democratic” election, we shall see how different the change will be from the authoritarian regime to a democracy in Egypt.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2012/0529/Egypt-elections-a-test-of-hard-won-civic-values