Egypt Witness: "Political Truthiness" in Cairo (Cook)

[Editor's Note: Yesterday the party of President Mubarak announced that the 82-year-old will run for a sixth term.]

There are creepy things about Egypt, but we aren’t talking about North Korea, after all. So instead of lies you get truthiness: “Egypt is an emerging democracy with 24 legal political parties and 250 newspapers and magazines. The fact that people are asking questions about succession is indicative of how far the leadership is willing to go to reform Egypt. The development of democracy will take a long time; things are not perfect, but Egypt’s come a long way in the last 10 years. President Hosni Mubarak is a transitional figure.” With the exception of the last one, each of these statements contains an element of truth even though they hardly tell the whole story. Still, it seems to be enough for the regime’s constituents. What does it matter really when one’s profits are up 30 percent a year or your ministry’s share of the state budget grows bigger or those shiny new F-16s arrive or you get to be a media personality?

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