Egypt's revolution: one year later

Father and boy celebrating the one year anniversary

“Mubarak was the head of a pyramid and what we find is that while he has been toppled, the rest of the pyramid is still there.” These words, spoken by a protester on Tahrir Square who gathered with thousands of fellow Egyptians to commemorate the first anniversary of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime, encapsulate the ambivalent feelings surrounding the revolution. On the one hand are those who see the 25^th of January as a celebratory day, which saw Egypt break free from the shackles of decades of authoritarian rule under Mubarak. In the words of Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who became the face of the revolution after creating a Facebook page for the protesters, “a psychological barrier of fear has been broken”. On the other side we have the invigorators who cast doubt on the achievements so far. Shaimaa Zain descended onto Tahrir Square a year ago to demand change and claims the reason she has returned is that “things haven’t improved. In fact they got worse”. She echoes the fears of many other compatriots in in saying there is a conspiracy between the military and the extremists.

The parliamentary elections saw the overriding victory of the Muslim Brotherhood, long smothered under Mubarak’s rule, and the more extreme Salafists who together control a majority of seats in parliament. Some worry that the Islamists will not challenge the power of the military, which still sits comfortably at the top of the pecking order and has been keeping the democratisation process going at a leisurely pace. The fear is that the Islamists will not mobilise their popular support to displace the military’s coddled position of strength because the current democratic process has paved their way to power; similarly the military will ensure the process ratchets ahead in such a way as to favour the Islamists. However some have dismissed such fears as unfounded. Egypt’s political class is divided in a triangular contest for power between the military, the Islamists and the revolutionaries.  Roger Hardy explains that the military and the Islamists are actually wary of one another, despite having been forced into “tactical accommodation” by events in the past.

Roger Hardy further claims that the army has unwittingly found itself in the limelight of the revolution, and is eager to return to the sidelines. Provided, of course, that its core interests are not threatened, such as its budget and perks and privileges. However this is probably an excessively sanguine view of the situation. Whilst a seamless transition like that in Tunisia was perhaps a bit elusive for a country like Egypt, the military certainly seems to have embraced its newfound position of power with gusto. The statement on its Facebook page for the eve of the one year anniversary emphasised its prominent role in the revolution: “the military protected the revolution, stood with its objectives, embraced its demands and promises to fulfil it”. The revolutionaries and liberals thus find themselves in an awkward position where they need the military to guide the delicate political process whilst simultaneously calling for its exclusion from the political scene.

 Having achieved their unifying goal, namely the end of Mubarak’s regime, the revolutionaries have failed to coalesce into a credible political force that can counteract the strength of the military and the Islamists through the normal political channels.  They have largely failed to translate their effervescent moral force into an efficient election-winning machine. For now the world waits with bated breath to see whether political Islam will indeed prove to be the democratic model for the Arab world. Revolutions, by their very nature, are rarely predictable. Egypt has been no exception.