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Europe & Middle East / Comment

The Travails of Egypt's Democrats

12/11/2005 By Irene Menendez

Demands for reform in Egypt are gathering momentum. A number of developments in the wake of the country’s presidential elections attest to the incipient drive for change. Mounting discontent across a wide social spectrum, together with an international context apparently more favourable to reform, is compounded by an expanding pro-reform movement, increasingly determined to publicly challenge the regime’s attempts to circumvent change. Proof of such determination was the somewhat tortuous birth on 22-23 October in Alexandria of the Egyptian Democracy Support Network (EDSN). The conference called to launch this initiative was, unsurprisingly perhaps, disrupted by elements linked to the Mubarak regime, which used physical violence against participants.

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Keywords

Conflict resolution Democracy Elections

Bio author: Irene Menendez

Graduate in International Relations and Modern History from the University of St Andrews (Scotland), she obtained her Masters in Political Sciences from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris. She has worked at the Royal Institute of International Relations, Brussels.