Democracy becomes firmly established, prospers and increases its ability to express the will of the popular majority inasmuch as the ideas, political parties and figures engaged in it are varied, and inasmuch as peaceful disagreement between rivals becomes heated. It also does not harm democracy for political discourse and criticism to be acute, nor does it harm it to stress the flaws of rivals and call their stances into question. All of these are conditions of healthy democracy, as long as everyone abides by it and respects its principles. Without these conditions, popular representation in constitutional institutions is distorted, resulting in disfigured models like those that have prevailed in the countries of the Arab Spring, especially Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. In Syria, the future remains obscure and rife with dangers of all sorts, as long as some of the conditions of dialogue that would lead to democracy and pluralism are not made available. In Tunisia, political forces, including the majority coalition resulting from the elections, have agreed to manage the transitional period smoothly, within the framework of preserving the integrity of past institutions, while awaiting the formation of a new constitution, without accusations of treason or threats. As for Egypt, where the battle for the presidency is raging, one can today witness a regression in the general climate to the phase that preceded parliamentary elections, which were characterized by transparency, and which are supposed to tend to the transitional period, in which must necessarily be taken into account the factors of the general situation, being the phase that stands between the past and the future, especially at the level of state institutions. And it is no coincidence for all active political forces to agree over the Military Council managing the country's affairs after the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. Indeed, it is such management that will ensure a smooth transition to the phase of democracy and pluralism. Yet what we are witnessing today, especially on the part of the Islamist forces that have reaped in the elections the fruits of the former regime's downfall, for many reasons and not just due to the weakness of secular, liberal and democratic forces, indicates that laying the foundations for the next phase is taking place on the basis of monopolizing power, which undermines the very bases that should govern the future democratic process. The stances of the Islamists on the candidacy of Omar Suleiman have come to confirm this trend, which had appeared at every previous milestone, from wanting to take charge of forming the government and monopolizing the constitutive assembly before the judicial appeal lodged against it, up to how to run the presidential campaign. No one is denying to all those who fulfill the conditions required the right to run as candidates to the presidency or to any other position. Yet the transitional phase imposes on everyone to take into consideration the stances of other forces, as the nature of such a transitional period does not only impose a minimum of consensus, but also imposes laying the foundations for a new method of political work that would ensure the right to diversity and difference of opinion. But for legislation to become, as the Islamists have done with the draft “exclusion law”, an executive tool in the service of a political approach, returns to memory the various kinds of tyranny witnessed by Egypt since the Free Officers coup. And the worst part of this is turning to the judiciary in order to deprive rivals of their political rights. Of course, many of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood remind us that this is the same approach that had been used against them in order to prevent them from working in politics, and to throw them in jail. Indeed, the issue here does not regard the candidacy of Omar Suleiman, but rather the method being established by the Islamists in confronting their rivals. Indeed, they have exploited their parliamentary majority in order to set the conditions for exercising one's political rights, on the eve of a presidential election campaign – while this should be the result of consensus within the government, referred to the parliament a long time before any elections. As for the rush that we have witnessed over the past two days, the least that can be said about it is that it represents a tendency towards laying the foundations for new tyranny, of a different kind this time.
