Opinion
The revolution that wasn't (yet)
The lion statue at Qasr-el-Nile in downtown Cairo, near Tahrir square, wears an eye patch. It shares the fate of many of the young protesters who have suffered from tear gas and live ammunition attacks in the renewed clashes with the security forces.
For the past two days, Egypt’s liberation square has once again turned into a battlefield. Attempts by protesters to give the upheaval a heroic touch calling it a ‘revolution 2.0’ cannot mask the sad truth: what was celebrated so euphorically after the ousting of Hosni Mubarak was not a revolution after all, but a military coup.
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A revolution replaces old institutions, practices and values of the system by new ones. None of this has happened in Egypt. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that has de facto ruled the country since the fall of Mubarak’s regime soon lost the Egyptian public’s sympathies through its increasing attempts to cement its own rule. Since the January upturn, the Supreme Council, a remnant of the Mubarak era, has mutated from an acclaimed saviour of the revolution to an autocratic brake bloc.
In the past 10 months, more civilians have been tried before military courts than during 30 years of Mubarak rule. A recent report by Amnesty International documented that torture and arbitrary detentions have continued as usual. The erstwhile ‘the people demand the fall of the regime’ has long been replaced by ‘the people demand the fall of the field marshal’.
When last week the military council overstepped a red line by attempting to impose a supreme role for itself in the new constitutional order, Egypt’s Tahrir spirit boiled over. Not even the Armed Forces leader field marshal Tantawy’s hurried concessions yesterday night ensuring the transfer of power within six months could calm the waters down. Nobody believes him; he had promised the same in February.
In Europe, or so it seems, the Arab spring has above all led many to many questions. Will the Islamists soon determine whether we can sip cocktails and wear bikinis in Djerba or at the Red Sea? Hopefully, the renewed scenes of courageous protesters at Tahrir will make Europe understand that not Islamists in general, or the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, are the greatest obstacle to Egypt’s democratic future. The greatest risk for Egyptian democracy and European interests is a return of the old regime through the back door.
Being the strongest political force in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s role will be decisive for the country’s future. If parliamentary elections are indeed to start on 28 November as planned, they are likely to give way to a Brotherhood-led coalition government. Under the current conditions, this would probably lead to a power struggle between the new government and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The Brotherhood’s recent decision to withdraw from the newly ignited protests is no good news. The Islamists could be keeping a tactical loophole to pact with the military council if the latter survives the current protests. This seems to indicate that the Brothers are prepared to sacrifice the democratic goals of the 25 January revolution for the sake of gaining power. The result of such a deal between military and Islamists would most likely be a (socially more conservative and less compliant in foreign policy) variation of the Mubarak regime.
However, should protesters gain once more the upper hand in the battle for Tahrir and succeed in pressuring the military to step down, the Brotherhood as ‘revolution cowards’ would find themselves in an uncomfortable position on the eve of the elections. The mood in the country is clear: the Supreme Council has to transfer power to a civilian government now. There is less consensus regarding how and to whom. But they all agree on one point: 25 January brought the entire country out of three decades of political coma; now, there is no going back.
The writer is research coordinator at FRIDE.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's, not those of EUobserver.