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Will Mideast Reformers Have a Friend in Obama?
[Washington Post] Jackson Diehl - Kenya declared a national holiday when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election. In Egypt the celebration was somewhat different: Government-controlled goons burned down the headquarters of the liberal democratic party that tried to embrace President Bush's "freedom agenda." Ayman Nour, the leader of that party, challenged Hosni Mubarak in Egypt's first contested presidential election in 2005, in large part because of Bush, who called on Egypt to "show the way" in the democratization of the Middle East. Mubarak won the election handily, then used a handpicked judge to sentence Nour to prison on trumped-up charges. The would-be democratic reformer has been behind bars ever since. The episode is significant because it demonstrates a principal conclusion that Mubarak and other "pro-Western" autocrats seem to have drawn from Obama's election: that the threat of U.S. pressure for political liberalization has passed. Mubarak is convinced that the next president won't pester him about human rights, reports the Egyptian press.