Statistics, Freedom, and Mubarak’s Egypt

By Naiem A. Sherbiny

Like mirrors, statistics do not lie. Governments, international organizations, research centers, universities, and the media use applied statistics to assess how much social development or degradation has taken place. During the last 25 years, social researchers made important conceptual and empirical strides to quantify and measure illusive but important notions in the socio-political development of nations such as the state of freedom, human rights, and corruption. Innovative indices, of a binary or stochastic nature, have been developed to measure social development. A given notion is broken down into basic components that can be traced in a comparative setting from country to country, and for the same country over a period of years.
When talking of the state of freedom, we look at several components and their quantitative indicators: (a) freedom of speech and expression, measured by who owns the media and other means of public expression; (b) freedom of assembly, measured by government policy towards public assembly and/or formation of political parties; (c) freedom of mobility and international travel, measured by State constraints imposed therein; (d) freedom of religion, measured by the extent of religious persecution of minorities. Freedom House, an American NGO supported by Eleanor Roosevelt more than 60 years ago, tracks the state of freedom in various countries in its annual report. During Mubarak’s long reign of 24 years, Egypt has been judged as ‘not free’. The Mubarak regime is seen in Washington as authoritarian, autocratic, and oppressive to its citizens since 1981. This causes consternation among American taxpayers, who are willing to support US aid to Egypt as means to increased freedoms for the Egyptian people.
Human rights have been articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human rights, to which Egypt has been a primary signatory. They include the above freedoms to which everyone is entitled without distinction; the presumption that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights; everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security; no slavery or servitude; presumption of innocence until proven guilty in legal arbitration; etc. Several international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First, among others, track developments affecting human rights in various countries. The annual reports of those organizations show clearly that under Mubarak, the Egyptian government has violated the basic human rights of its people and applied arbitrary rules to dissidents and political opposition.
Finally, a word on corruption, which may be defined as using public office for private gain. Corruption is a human phenomenon, common in developed and developing countries alike. But it is the degree of corruption that is an issue. Transparency International has tracked corruption since 1995 in various countries. The organization has devised a so-called ‘corruption Index’ based on statistical evidence to rank countries according to the spread of corruption in their body politic. Egypt under Mubarak has had the dubious distinction of being consistently above average, compared to other countries.

A Chinese proverb sums it up aptly: ‘the fish rots first at the head’.