Mubarak’s trial is an embarrassment

The trial of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is about to close. During the trial the world press has been treated to a spectacle of a trial that falls far short of the standards of a free and fair trial. Mr Mubarak, 85, has been attending court while strapped to a gurney. He could as well have attended court from his hospital bed.

Conscientious jurisprudence and everything we learned in law school talks of the right of the accused to be given a chance to defend themselves ably and vigorously. The right to a fair trial also includes the ability to follow proceedings and confront accusers.

Mubarak’s sick call slip is not public but the fact that he has been ailing, suffered a stroke and cannot stand unaided and or possibly is in declining mental health call into serious question the jurisprudence of our northern neighbours and Arabs.

It would be one thing to watch this embarrassment of a trial play out on global TV but another to see the absence of counter-commentary from human rights organisations, so-called global monitors of human rights abuses. Mubarak should enjoy the same rights as a common criminal- the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial and so on.

During Mubarak’s last days, there was ululation everywhere. The fall of Mubarak, Egyptian leader since 1981, and important client state of the West brought exaltations from weary Egyptians- the Arab World’s most populous country. For years, Mubarak was routinely elected President with near unanimity of the Egyptian voters. Mubarak banned most forms of alternative dissent, including the Muslim Brotherhood- Egypt’s largest political party.

Mubarak, a former army officer, performed the duties of state and ostensibly may, under both domestic and international customary law enjoy some immunity, was a symbol of something bigger. He was America and the West’s most important calling card in the Middle East.

After Camp David in 1979-- an agreement between Israel and Egypt, Egypt became the second-biggest recipient of foreign military assistance. Foreign aid to the Egyptians took the form of an entirely independent stream of appropriations the full extent of which the American taxpayer has never received accountability for. In his autobiography, the Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld describes the hypocrisy behind this relationship.

America held its nose to keep a relationship going that had little relevance to the common man. Mubarak and others delivered for the Americans on their “security objectives” but were allowed to pursue so-called independent policies at home- authoritarian rule at home, criticism of the West and so on.

In fact, Rumsfeld’s autobiography- one of the few well written and candid ones-- acknowledges the fact that the Egyptian military actually ran Egypt. There is no Egypt without the military. I will not use this space to describe countries in similar situations. In fact, the Egyptian revolution to-date remains incomplete because the Egyptian military still runs the state today. No country in Africa receives the lavish on-hand attention of the American taxpayer like the Egyptians. Egypt remains an important tourist destination, the gateway to the Holy Lands and protector of the Suez Canal, a global shipping junction that connects Europe to Africa and Asia.

Since Mubarak’s fall, all hands have been on the deck. All of America’s political cogniscenti, including Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, have visited. America has watered down the need for a very liberal democracy, an arrangement that would have resulted in one of Egypt’s leading lights, Mohammed el Baradei, ascending to the presidency or the second more likely result: the Muslim Brotherhood acquiring state power. The military still runs the show. Egyptians are receiving all sorts of help. Nearly 80-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a US Supreme Court Justice, visited this winter and weighed in on a new constitutional order.

A few ruffles sometimes show up. The Egyptians have arrested certain nonprofit American for “spreading democracy without a license”, including officials of the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, two organisations that “promote” democracy American style in the world. Senator John McCain, IRI patron is in Egypt pleading their case. Fortunately, the Americans are not attending court strapped to a gurney.

The new democracy is a challenge to conventional eyes. Is it the ear-piercing democracy- the sort coming up next door where tribal regalia will sit alongside liberal jurisprudence in Nairobi or some muscular form of democracy with lawyer-cum soldier Kale Kayihura’s fingers planted on a trigger aimed at the regime’s opponents. No one really knows. I leave that for another day.

Mr Ssemogerere, an attorney and social entrepreneur, practices law in New York.
kssemoge@gmail.com