{"id":13430,"date":"2011-12-23T12:55:56","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T08:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=13430"},"modified":"2011-12-24T12:01:08","modified_gmt":"2011-12-24T08:01:08","slug":"egypt-and-yemen-protestors-being-marginalised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/egypt-and-yemen-protestors-being-marginalised\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt and Yemen: Protestors Being ‘Marginalised’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>THE POPULAR revolts in Egypt and Yemen have been put on the defensive by\u00a0a combination of Islamist electoral success and Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council\u00a0(GCC) support for Egypt’s military and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Despite\u00a0being under siege, Saleh has been showing an uncanny ability to neutralise a\u00a0GCC-negotiated\u00a0agreement that would ease him out of office by February.<\/p>\n

Islamists have successfully exploited Egypt’s first post-revolt election to marginalise\u00a0the protesters on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, who battled with security forces last month,\u00a0resulting in 42 dead. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi Al Nur movement\u00a0together won an absolute majority in the first two of three rounds in the first\u00a0parliamentary elections since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last February.\u00a0The final outcome will be determined in a third round of voting in January.<\/p>\n

From square to ballot box<\/strong><\/p>\n

The intial election result has positioned the Salafis as the main competitor of the\u00a0protesters on Tahrir Square in challenging establishment political parties and forces,\u00a0whether remnants of the ancien regime, the country’s military rulers or the Muslim\u00a0Brotherhood (MB), with the MB being viewed by many as the opposition wing of the\u00a0old established order. The new parliament is expected to appoint most of the\u00a0members of the committee that will be tasked with drafting a new constitution in\u00a0advance\u00a0of a presidential election in June 2012.<\/p>\n

The electoral success of the MB and their rivals, the Salafis – a heterogeneous\u00a0movement of fundamentalist Muslims who want to return to the practices of Islam’s\u00a07th century Caliphs — has shifted the battle against the old regime, the military\u00a0rulers\u00a0and established political parties, from the square to the ballot box.<\/p>\n

The military, despite contradictory statements on whether it would recognise the\u00a0election result by allowing parliament to exercise power, sought to reinforce that\u00a0shift in bitter battles with protesters camped out in front of the newly appointed\u00a0prime\u00a0minister’s office. At least 10 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in ongoing\u00a0clashes. The military is trying to move the protesters away from the prime minister’s\u00a0office and out of the square in the belief that a majority of Egyptians, by casting\u00a0their vote, have opted for electoral politics.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian military and the Salafis may be on opposite side of the fence, but they\u00a0both in their respective ways serve Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) efforts\u00a0to blunt the edge of popular revolts sweeping the Middle East that have also toppled\u00a0the\u00a0leaders of Tunisia and Libya, forced the exit of Yemen’s President Saleh and pushed\u00a0Syria to the brink of civil war. Both the military council and Salafis are supported\u00a0by the\u00a0Saudis through US $4 billion in assistance to the military regime and reported funding\u00a0for the Salafis through public and private donations.<\/p>\n

The Salafis electoral success however constitutes a mixed blessing for the Saudis.\u00a0The participation of a strand of Islam closely associated with that of the kingdom\u00a0implicitly challenges Saudi assertions that democracy contradicts Islam.<\/p>\n

Backfiring in Yemen<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the Saudi strategy is effectively rendering the Egyptian protesters marginal,\u00a0it is backfiring in Yemen where a GCC-negotiated agreement for Saleh’s departure\u00a0from power has enabled him to maintain his grip even though he has officially handed\u00a0over to his vice-president. Since his return from medical treatment in Riyadh Saleh’s\u00a0agreement to leave office following an election scheduled for February 2012 leaves him\u00a0enough time and space to consolidate his power instead. He has also authorised his\u00a0vice-president to appoint a new cabinet — in violation of the constitution.<\/p>\n

Under the GCC agreement Saleh gets to remain in Yemen with immunity from\u00a0prosecution, while his family members retain control of key military units and his\u00a0vice-president becomes president for the next two years as a new constitution is\u00a0drafted.\u00a0All this has stiffened the opposition of the protesters on Sanaa’s Change Square who\u00a0reject\u00a0the deal. Unlike the protesters on Tahrir Square who have faded from public view, the\u00a0protests on Change Square have been reinforced by the recent awarding of a Nobel peace\u00a0prize to a Change Square leader Tawakkol Karman.<\/p>\n

Their resolve is further strengthened by the failure of the energy-rich Gulf states to\u00a0alleviate the economic suffering in the Arab world’s poorest state. Though Yemen, far\u00a0more than Egypt, is dependent on foreign aid for relief, the Gulf states have refused\u00a0Yemen’s repeated appeals for improved access of Yemeni workers to GCC labour markets.\u00a0These have been restricted since the expulsion in the early 1990s of one million\u00a0Yemenis\u00a0from Saudi Arabia in retaliation for Yemeni support of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

Opening up labour markets would allow labourers to send remittances back to a\u00a0country in\u00a0economic collapse.<\/p>\n

One striking exception, and a model for what Saudi Arabia and other GCC states could do\u00a0to prevent further destabilisation of Yemen and a potential threat to Gulf security,\u00a0is an\u00a0initiative by a foundation headed by the wife of the emir of Qatar, Sheikha Moza.<\/p>\n

Her foundation\u00a0acts to create jobs in Yemen, whose labour force is largely under-skilled and where\u00a0youth\u00a0unemployment is estimated at 50 per cent, to increase vocational training in Yemen and\u00a0incubate start-ups.<\/p>\n

Islamist tide<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, on both Tahrir Square and Change Square, protesters have found themselves\u00a0marginalised. The main factors behind this marginalisation are the established\u00a0political forces\u00a0with the political machinery and experience to exploit the transition for their own\u00a0ends, and\u00a0the Saudi-supported Salafis who are riding the Islamist tide sweeping the region.<\/p>\n

The fate of\u00a0the Tahrir Square protesters will depend on whether the elections, due to end in\u00a0mid-January,\u00a0are perceived as having advanced the revolt’s cause.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Sanaa’s Change Square still has wind in its sails. There is a growing\u00a0perception\u00a0that the GCC agreement has failed to oust Saleh while Yemen’s wealthy neighbours\u00a0stand by\u00a0as the country sinks into a deeper morass. As a result Change Square seems to have a\u00a0longer\u00a0lease of life than its more famous counterpart in Cairo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JAMES M. DORSEY: Powerful forces are at work in both Egypt and Yemen to mould the emerging political landscape to benefit these particular players. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":13431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,173,482,10,5,180],"tags":[3473,378,125,18300,10409,969,2805,18342,1115,2323,18321,18332,4525,191,389,1808,2204,18307,3008,10408,3104,18275,18330,399,10402,18322,18313],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}