Tag: Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)

Egypt’s ‘2011 gains lost’ as Sisi extends authoritarian rule

     

    Egyptian voters approved (HT:Foreign Policy) constitutional changes, including an amendment that could permit President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to stay in office through 2030. But opposition groups rejected the vote,… Read more »

Mini-Arab Spring? ‘Khashoggi was right: Arabs still want democracy’

     

Before his death, the late Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was trying to set up several organizations to promote the cause of democracy in the region — particularly one that aimed, among… Read more »

Neighbors’ lesson for Algeria: transitions are uncertain, unpredictable – and reversible

     

  Algeria’s interim leader Abdelkader Bensalah said an election to choose a successor to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika will take place on July 4. Bouteflika, in power for twenty years, stepped… Read more »

Don’t ‘green light’ Egypt’s repression

     

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s visit to the White House on April 9, 2019 comes at a time when his government has been stifling dissent before a planned constitutional referendum that… Read more »

‘Egypt Under Pressure’: toward a personalist dictatorship

     

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi plans to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House on April 9, the Egyptian strongman’s second Oval Office visit in two years, the… Read more »

Is Tunisia really democratizing? Progress + resistance = uncertain outlook

     

While Tunisia’s eighth anniversary celebrations of the end of the Ben Ali dictatorship were marred by social protests, opinions differ about the country’s state of political development as it gears… Read more »

‘No to the Fifth Term’: Algeria’s New Protest Movement

     

In recent weeks, Algeria has witnessed mass protests demanding that the ailing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, not run for a fifth five-year term in the election scheduled for April 18. The… Read more »

Algeria’s protests: the ‘whole political system needs to be changed’

     

Algerians took to the streets on Tuesday with renewed calls for 82-year-old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down and not seek any more time in office when the country votes… Read more »

Egypt moves to enhance authoritarian rule

     

Proposed amendments to Egypt’s constitution, including granting the armed forces authority to intervene in government, would undermine judicial independence and expand executive powers that are already being abused, Human Rights… Read more »

Egypt faces ‘worst crackdown on freedoms in modern history’

     

  Eight years ago this week, protests erupted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, with throngs of Egyptians demanding an end to autocratic rule and chanting the slogan, “Bread, freedom, social justice,”  Jared… Read more »