Monitoring Arab reform

Egypt's workers are an emerging political force (Credit: Carnegie).

Egypt’s Islamist opposition is facing leadership challenges, writes Ibrahim el Houdaiby. Increasingly influential Salafist/Qutbi forces are striving to marginalize relatively moderate figures like Essam el-Erian and Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh.

Obsessed with efforts to engineer Gamal Mubarak’s succession to his father’s presidency, the mainstream media is missing the emergence of a new political force in Egypt, writes Saif Nasrawi. The country’s labor unions are trying to shrug off Soviet-style state patronage and assert their independence, while traditional economistic demands for better wages and conditions are acquiring a more political edge, he argues.  

Both write in the November 2009 Arab Reform Bulletin, which also includes:  Tribulations of the Electoral Law  in Iraq, by Sam Parker; Where is Hamas in the West Bank?, by Omran Risheq; Omar Ashour on Post-Jihadism and the Inevitability of Democratization; and Aziz Douai on Obstacles to a New Press Code in Morocco.