"Corruption Is Just a Different Kind of Tax"
In the commuter train between Casablanca and Rabat, a well-dressed man in his mid-forties politely asks me if he can look at the book I am reading. The title is "Everyday Corruption", published by Transparency Maroc, the local chapter of Transparency International. The man glances through the table of contents then returns the book, shaking his head.
"I am the manager of a motor vehicle registration office in a town not far from Rabat. My staff earn the equivalent of 300 euro on average. They need at least twice as much to feed their families".
Corruption as part of the civil servant's wage
He complains that the state did not have the money to pay civil servants appropriately because it did not collect enough taxes.
"What Transparency Maroc calls 'corruption' can be looked at from a different angle, as a levy or a type of tax. Isn't it more sensible to pay civil servants directly than to give the money to the Treasury where it will then probably be siphoned of into dubious channels?"
This attitude is understandable. The man on the train knows that he alone cannot change the way things are. Bribes will always be part of the way of life in Morocco. They may even determine questions of life and death, for example, when being admitted to hospital is at stake. Today, such issues are discussed openly.
"Corruption is being trivialised"
"Corruption is no longer taboo," says Sion Assidon, co-founder of Transparency Maroc, "the situation is worse. Corruption is being trivialised."
Corruptibility is the rule rather than the exception, and this makes it difficult to convince young people that it is reprehensible and detrimental. It is neither a secret that police chiefs make money out of drugs trade and prostitution, nor that secret service agents, army officers and customs officials get rich on cannabis export or subsidies for occupied West Sahara.
According to the Moroccan dissident Moumen Diouri, King Hassan II was involved in the French company, which built the Grand Mosque in Casablanca. All subjects, even the poorest, had to pay a special tax for this monument.
When Hassan II died in July 1999 after 37 years of dictatorship, he allegedly controlled deposits of more than 40 billion dollars in foreign banks. His country, however, still lacks the funds to pay civil servants what they would deserve for decent work.
The situation in other Arab nations
Things are not much different in other Arab nations. The Structural Adjustment Programs from the 1980s and 1990s, with their state expenditure cutbacks and privatisation, have in many places encouraged corruption. Of course, there are laws that prohibit this sort of thing.
But in cases of conflict, the final decision lies with individuals – powerful family or clan members – who are above the law, mostly de facto but sometimes even de jure.
In Morocco, the constitution itself states that the king is above the constitution. In Jordan, the king can dissolve parliament if he wishes. Tunisia's president Zein El Abdin Ben Ali had the constitution changed so that he could become president for a third term.
In 2000, the Syrian parliament reduced the minimum age set by the constitution for the Syrian head of state to 34. That enabled Bashar Al-Assad to succeed to the presidency after his father's death.
Unfulfilled expectations
In the 1990s, many hoped that the winds of change from Eastern Europe would blow through Arab countries. In some countries, political parties came into existence and elections were held. But the new institutions proved, almost without exception, to be pseudo-democratic.
In Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and in the Gulf States, powerful elites, behind the facades, went on behaving as if their state was their private property. The personalised style of political governance and clientelistic structures take advantage of the law, but they are not subject to it. There is neither an independent judiciary, nor are there any other checks and balances.
Free press, effective parliaments, civil-societal or government-run monitoring agencies are poorly developed in Arab countries – if they exist at all. Daily squabbling with authorities wears down the helpless people at their mercy.
Anyone seriously fighting for constitutional rule to check corruption and abusive power is indirectly pleading for a change from dictatorship to democracy. The UNDP's Arab Human Development Reports of 2002 and 2003 cautiously speak of "political reforms". Nonetheless, the prospects are dismal.
"Most Arab regimes cannot be reformed" is the opinion of the Syrian publicist and human rights activist Michel Kilo. "They are too entrenched for that. They will either be brought down from outside or collapse from within."
Crisis is the rule, not the exception
Coups or at least major unrest are quite likely to happen before long in some Arab countries. The Kurdish revolts in Northern Syria and the social protests in the Lebanon, during which countless people died in May 2004, could be omens for this. Seemingly perpetual domestic crises prevail in almost all Arab countries.
In the meantime, democratic rhetoric has been lacking credibility for most people for a long time. Western governments have contributed to this sorry state of affairs. For 12 years, the economic embargo punished the Iraqi population for the atrocities of its tyrant.
The occupation of Iraq last year, tacit toleration of the expulsion of the Palestinians by Israel and the scandals of Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib further destroyed belief in "western" values.
It is questionable whether regime changes would lead to greater democracy and to constitutionally guaranteed order. Today, considerable sectors of the opposition in Arab countries promote models of governance which resemble the existing ones in their hierarchal aspects, but turn out even more anti-liberal and anti-modern.
It is no positive sign that the Iraqi government, barely in office, immediately put in place rules for emergency rule.
Instead of radical change – a march through the institutions
Religious parties and authoritarian ideology are popular everywhere. They too promise to fulfil the deep-seated wish for predictable and fair living conditions. Enlightened and secular-oriented modernisers are therefore no longer backing radical change, but rather promote "to march through the institutions".
Leading Arab human rights activists and critical intellectuals are no longer talking of democracy as a political goal, but of good governance. Among these is Nader Fergany from Egypt, the main author of the Arab Human Development Reports.
The desire for legally guaranteed freedoms is stronger than the desire for wider political co-determination or even the desire for participation in ultimately questionable elections.
Human rights and the fight against corruption
The two most important topics are human rights and the fight against corruption. Transparency International is well-known as an important protagonist in the Arab region. There are national chapters in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan as well as in Morocco.
Independent human rights organisations, lawyers' associations, anti-torture committees, prisoner release organisations and treatment centres for victims of torture have sprung in many places since the 1980s.
In Algeria, relatives of disappeared people joined together to force the state to hand over information. In Morocco, former political prisoners formed the "Forum for Truth and Justice" in 1999. However, there were political differences, for example over dealings with Islamic prisoners or victims of torture.
Such conflicts have often resulted in division and paralysis. The Forum for Truth and Justice no longer exists. Among other reasons, it failed because of disagreement over the question whether victims of torture and former political prisoners should accept compensation payments by the Moroccan state (in other words: king), even though this meant giving up the right to pursue further legal action.
For pragmatic reasons, many affected people settled for this.
A strong, independent judiciary needs strong, independent lawyers. In Tunisia, the Jeunes Avocats joined forces to speak up for the constitutional state and to undergo continuing education.
In Cairo the non-governmental Arab Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession offers continuing education and discussion groups for critical lawyers. POGAR, the UNDP-sponsored Programme on Governance in the Arab Region, also makes an important contribution to legal capacity building.
The decisive role of the media
Theoretically the media should contribute to spreading constitutional and democratic ideals in the Arab world. While access to the internet is strictly controlled in some countries, satellite television is not subject to local authorities. But until now Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and their ilk have hardly reported affairs of individual countries.
Abuses of power are covered only occasionally. "The Arab regional satellite broadcasters definitely have the potential for democratisation", says media expert Gregor Meiering. "But they will only be able to change things for good if national press coverage also becomes democratic".
So far, there is no sign of this happening. On the contrary, freedom of the press has been drastically reduced again in several Arab countries since 2001. The sentencing of the well-known Algerian newspaper journalist Benchicou to two years' imprisonment on 14 June 2004 is just one example of many.
Difficult global climate for democratization
The desire for a constitutional state implies that there is a (nation) state which is willing to protect public welfare and to structure co-existence. However, nation-states are in fact losing the power to shape living conditions in this era of globalisation.
In addition, constitutional principles are also being undermined in Europe and North America in the course of the anti-terror campaign. Given this panorama, it is illusory to hope that Arab communities might create more legally reliable states by themselves.
In the meantime, western donors should be careful not to preach unreliable but instant recipes for success.
Instead, people should get together and ask questions like: What does democracy mean? What do you understand by a "constitutional state" and what is our understanding? Which state, how much state do we want, and what do you want? And what can we do to solve the Palestine conflict in an equitable way?
In many Arab countries, civil society is still weak. Nonetheless, its organisations can benefit from dialogue and further education.
The Arab Social Fora, which have, among other organisations, set up the Arab NGO Network for Development, are good starting points. The Fora meet regularly, most recently at the Forum Social Maroc. In the era of globalisation, the path to the Arab rule of law leads through global rule of law.
Telephone bill in Algeria: a negotiable matter
Samira, the head of a women's organisation in Algiers, is not in a good mood. The state-operated telephone company has sent an enormous telephone bill. "For months the telephone lines don't work and we don't get any bills at all", she complains. Then suddenly they want us to pay amounts that no one can prove.
Samira knows that her organisation's telephone will be disconnected if it doesn't pay the bill. So she will spend a lot of time in the next days negotiating with officials. She must get the bill down to a manageable amount, and while she is doing this she will probably have to try to ignore sexual harassment.
Just the week before she had to waste time fighting with the police to get a trainee out of prison who had been arrested for allegedly insulting an official. "They kept him there for days without any reason", she complains. "They beat him and even threatened him sexually, just to get money from us or from his family".
Career in Jordan: not against "Wasta"
In a hookah café in Amman, Munir waves an envelope. "My ticket to Los Angeles," he rejoices. In a few days he will fly to California – probably for good. The 29-year-old man stems from a Christian Palestinian family and has a degree in mechanical engineering from England.
He already had the contract for his position as representative of a large European engineering company in his pocket. His qualifications could be made use of in Jordan. But Wasta, the traditional network of Jordanian connections, was stronger.
Despite good qualifications and reasonable prices, he did not get enough orders. "According to the constitution, the free market economy reigns here", Munir grins. "But in reality, that is not the case. Without connections, you will not be successful." Munir says that he didn't necessarily want to emigrate to the USA, but there was another good reason for doing so.
"I can marry my Muslim girlfriend without having to convert to Islam."
Free elementary education in Egypt: in theory, yes
Iman, nine years old, comes home from school crying once again. The teacher gave her bad marks for her Literature
Inge Amundsen and Basem Ezbidi, 2002: Clientelist politics. State formation and corruption in Palestine 1994-2000, Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute
Moumen Diouri, 1992: A qui appartient le Maroc?, Paris: L'Harmattan
Djillali Hadjadj, 2001: Corruption et démocratie en Algérie, Paris: La Dispute
Transparency Maroc (supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation), 1999: La Corruption au Quotidien, Casablanca 1999: Le Fennechomework, even though Iman had done it correctly. Iman's father works as a janitor in central Cairo and does not earn enough to pay for the "private tuition" the teacher "offers".
In Egypt, elementary education is free for all children only in theory. Teachers at state schools earn the equivalent of 50 to 100 euros per month, which is a pittance, and so they make "private classes" compulsory, regardless of whether or not the children need such additional tuition at all.
Given illiteracy rates of 50 percent, widespread corruption at schools is a serious educational problem for society. For Iman's father, it is just one of the many causes of stress he has to struggle with. "There is nowhere we can turn to," he says. "Corruption is simply everywhere. If you don't have any money, you are powerless."
Martina Sabra
First published in Development and Cooperation, 07/2004
Arab Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, ACIJLP (in Arabic and English)
Arab NGO Network for Development, ANNP (in Arabic and English)
Programme on Governance in the Arab Region, POGAR (in Arabic and English)
Martina Sabra is an Orientalist who works as a freelance journalist and project evaluator, specialising on Northern Africa.