Well, hi! I'd like to answer your question in regard to my point of view, as a revolutionary here in Egypt, & also the point of view of many of my revolutionary friends.
Yes, you're right. The prospect of having a true democracy in Egypt has hit a dead-end, as it seems now.
Well, let me tell you the whole picture from the start. There are actually 4 sections of the Egyptian society playing from the start of the revolution: 1. Supporters of the 60-year old military regime (including Mubarak), & those include major businessmen who own all media channels here in Egypt, as well as personnel of the bureaucratic institutions (including the police & the judicial system) who've been having built-up interests with this old regime & the military institution (that rues all major political & economic positions & enterprises in the country since 1952). 2. The Muslim Brotherhood & their supporters from Salafis, who have their aim in this revolution only as to substitute military dictatorship with religious dictatorship, & retain all powers in their hands. 3. The inactive majority of the Egyptian people, who are interested in nothing but to live their daily lives normally & get what they can get, & they get very easily affected by media as well as mosques/churches propaganda, & they don't participate in politics except to go routinely cast their votes in elections for the parties that propaganda ask them to support. 4. And, finally us the minority of revolutionaries, who struggle in the streets continuously, & have zero financial or organizational capacity to affect the above majority of the people & drive them to support our cause for building a civilian democracy.
After the overthrowing of Mubarak, the military tried all it might to instill in the minds of the Egyptian majority that the military is the true supporter of the people & their revolution, & without the military this revolution would've never got a chance to succeed, or worse, would've turned out into a civil war like what happens in Syria now; & that the revolution is only against Mubarak & his corruption, so the military got along demonizing the era of Mubarak while glorifying the eras of both Sadat & Abd AlNaser to convince the people that that Mubarak's regime is not part of the military regime.
They nearly succeeded in that, especially when the MB supported them in this propaganda through their mosques, for their own reasons of course; in order to use the military as a ladder to reach power themselves.
The military turned out much smarter than the MB indeed. When they found that the people started to get angry from SCAF's rule by the end of their one-year rule, & started to sympathize with revolutionaries. They played & rigged the presidential elections, along with the MB, so that the end-result would be to choose between a military guy & a MB guy for a president. And, in order to play their genius trick, the military succumbed to give the presidential power for the MB temporarily, knowing that he'll not last for more than a year!
Indeed, along this whole year, with the control the old military regime had on institutions & media, all state institutions & economic enterprises worked on deteriorating the living conditions of the Egyptian during MB rule, while the media worked on demonizing Morsi & his MB gang & connecting all the country's problems, including foreign problems that we already have with other countries for over a decade, to the MB!
I was one of the revolutionaries who took to the streets demanding the removal of Morsi from day one in his presidency. But revolutionaries wanted to topple down MB rule for completely other reasons different from what the media was propagandizing to the Egyptian people. First; MB was working on substituting old regime personnel in state institutions with only MB personnel, indicating that their aim was to substitute military dictatorship with MB dictatorship, so we had a fear that our hard-fought revolution would end up as what happened in Iran 1979, to topple a regime only to bring another bad, or even worse, regime. Second; even giving more evidence to our fear is that MB started to kidnap & kill some leading revolutionaries of non-Islamist movements, & although the military regime of course has, & still is, killing a far greater number of revolutionaries than the MB did, we still didn't fight for this revolution to choose between a bad option & worse option.
The situation now of course, has become the worst, even worse than Mubarak oppression days. Revolutionaries have taken to the streets on June 30th to topple the MB regime through the power of the people, but the majority of people (who're far more numbered than revolutionaries) took to the streets demanding that the military topples the MB regime! Of course, this whole witty orchestrated scenario was very elegantly played by the military from the start of the revolution, with the aid of state institutions & the media, to make people themselves demand that the military rule back again. & now people, again with the help of the media that's waging a war-mongering propaganda similar to what the American media was doing before the Iraq invasion to tell the people that we're waging a national patriotic war against terrorism of the MB & we should all stand behind our patriotic military & its leader AlSisi in this war against all traitors (the opposing revolutionaries against military rule, & they're saying in the streets that military rule has proved to be better than democratic rule (referring to MB rule, which was only theocratic), so it's better for Egypt to stay ruled by the military just like before the revolution.
Demonstrations now are dealt with by the police & military in extremely violent manner, which has never been adopted before. Our last anniversary of the 25th January, we were shot immediately by live gun by the military even before starting our demonstrations, while Tahrir Square was closed by military tanks, & occupied by military supporters calling for AlSisi to be Egypt's president.
And the minority revolutionaries now, who are always disorganized & have absolutely no voice in the media (except on facebook!), are either in jails, or have been killed in demonstrations, or crying over our revolution on facebook!
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wrastelli
10 years ago
Thank you for this. Really like to read the view from the ones involved
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angel-el
10 years ago
well . since you like to hear from the people involved , i would like to increase your knowledge if you allow me
in 25 January 2011 the people and mostly youth like me reached their limit because the regime that was controlling Egypt did not care the least about us . so a revolution happened , one that was welcomed by almost every country in the world!! we really thought the job was done and egypt is on the path to become a great and wonderful country like we were in the past . but that did not happen
when the military took over after Mubarak it didn't really try to improve the country or worsen it to say the truth , they just wanted a state of stagnation until the new president is elected , people got angry and they had the right to that cuz nothing happened after the revolution , the economy did not improve , health care did not improve , education did not improve , nothing was improving
so the people took to the streets again , and violence erupted
that is when the military decided it does not want to get involved any longer and decided the elections to be held
in the end people had to choices morsi or mubarak prime minister shafik
although people hated mubarak's government , morsi won by less than 51%
why ?? cuz during this year the MB won the election of both the upper and the lower house , and god how horrible they are !!! they wanted to turn the country to an Islamic state , i am muslim and i refused it cuz no matter what they say , what they had in mind was not an islamic state but actually a base or a haven for every terrorist out there , they tried to impose some of the strangest low like forbidding the ballet . THE BALLET !!!!
anyway morsi won and the country got worse , the worse state we had in like 50 years , even worse than mubarak whom we overthrow , the worst economy , worse health care , worse education , prices went up , crimes increased and for the first time egypt had petrol shortage , it never happened before . also morsi released every terrorist we had in jail , including the one who killed the former president anwar el sadat , imagine releasing lee harvy oswald from prison and gave him money and protecion after he killed Kennedy
sinai was opened for every terrorist out there , and they took that chance
in 30 june , after enormous protest in which millions (much more than 25 jan) took to the streets the military led by general sisi ( field marshal sisi back then) overthrow morsi after giving him ultimatum to either accept the demands of the people or the military will step in , a new government and a new constitution were made , what did the MB do ?? took arms
started killing soldiers who are just protecting our borders , started ambushing police officers at their homes and attacked police HQs , tried to assassin the interior minister , only now did we start realize how many did terrorists morsi allowed into the country , they even attacked universities , who would attack a university in a protest ?!!!! and then they claim they are the victims and the problem is , the western countries believe them , or it is in their interest to keep the MB in power i dunno
and their the the rest of revolutionaries , who believes the everyone is bad but themselves , they do not like the military , the MB , the old regime or anyone actually , in 25 jan and 30 june they had clear goals and demands , now they do not have any , they just want to protest , i actually do not know what to write about them .
i am so sorry i had to write all this , i do not know if you or anyone is gonna read all of this but i hope you do , it may give an idea about the crisis in egypt , may it end one day :)
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wrastelli
10 years ago
I just read it :)
Don't have anything to add, but thanks, it's very informative
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borngeek
9 years ago
Thanks for that, really helpful comment. How are things at present there?
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Tnushi
10 years ago
Well, thanks wrastelli & angel-el for your interest in my opinon.
Well, wrastelli, here you've got two different points of view from Egyptians, one a revolutionary – me - & the other a former regime supporter - angel-el -.
As I mentioned during my previous comment, former regime supporters make it seem as if we made the 25th January revolution only against Mubarak; though any revolution that takes place, is a revolution over the whole political regime that ruled a country for a given no. Of years, not just the incumbent president. Our revolution was against the military regime that ruled us since 1952 (& only Mubarak was its last president, himself being a military general).
If you wanna know how the Egyptian media makes a war-mongering campaign now to brainwash the majority of Egyptians, to drive them to support the military rule against any kind of ooposition (whether Islamist, liveral, socialist, revolutionary opposition), naming this as war on terrorism of MB; angel-el just summarized what the media says in a nutshell for you! And, sadly the majority of Egyptians (with high percents of poverty, illiteracy, & low education) of course get affected by such propaganda in no time!
Actually, we found out that many of those terrorist bombings & killings are orchestrated by the military rule itself, to justify its extremely harsh measures in its dealing with any free opposition & revolutionary voices (over 21,ooo revolutionaries – non-MB- are in jails right now, & you can multiply that number by 3 or 4 to know the no. Of MB members in jail). As you probably already know, military & any fascist rule cannot gain legitimacy from people without creating another enemy that's claimed to spread chaos & terrorism in the country in order for the people to march in millions hailing & standing behind their patriotic dictatorship that's "the only protector of the people from such chaos & insecurity"... In fact, just about a week ago, a police officer was killed. Of course the media raged against the terrorists MB who did that, & guess what? This officer was the only witness against the head of the security force in one of the Egyptian cities, where over 70 young men were killed by thugs (paid by the military rule) in 2011 during SCAF rule, 'cause those young men were from the Ultras group that was a key part of revolutionary movements!
As revolutionaries since the 25th January, our demand has always been simple & clear: having a true civilian (non-military & non-religious) democratic rule, & for this we always get attacked by military regime supporters, MB, the military, the police, & of course ordinary Egyptians who get affected by the media that's always working on erasing the revolution of 25th January as if it has never happened! Unfortunately, the military generals has played a really smart trick on us since the overthrow of Mubarak; it pushed for substituting its rule with a theocratic-MB one & back again to an ever worse military rule now, to make it seem to non-revolutionary politically-unaware Egyptians that Egypt is only stuck between two choices, & forget the true aim of the revolution: to have a civilian free developed Egypt!
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wrastelli
10 years ago
In my miss-informed view from the outside I was always expecting a body within the military would again push for "western-style democracy", and make some sort of compromise with revolutionaries in the process. Looked like the thing preventing democracy was the danger of Islam... Military couldn't allow elections now on the risk of MB taking over again.
Also assumed that would be some astute strategic geopolitical choice right now too (using militar words here). It's possible the "external forces" are more happy to surrender democracy now to a strong hand that will just keep things in check and fight Islam instead. Sounds like something they do.
But indeed, by your description I was very wrong. Militaries are thirsty for power. They don't want to give up power anytime soon. They wouldn't jail 21,000 people unless they're "the enemy" of the regime too. It's not a fair game cause while they're part of election process they're the only force able to use massive state repression. They use it for political gains.
Same thing happened in most of South America some 40 years ago btw... Military played the danger of communism and Cuba/URSS (real or imagined) to gain civil and external support and take power. Once there they didn't return the government to the civilians and only improved repression.
I have no clue about the revolutionay situation in Egypt right now, but I feel in moments like these it's important to retreat a bit from the streets and build the kind of structures that build up for the future - parties, media, meetings, movements... Surrender opinions to keep unity, etc. Streets need to make an impact in civil society in other ways too, even if it takes some years.
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Tnushi
10 years ago
Yes, wrastelli, you're right. The danger of the MB to the revolution is very trivial indeed compared to the danger of the military, as, like you said, the military has all the power resources in its hands, besides controlling all the crucial state institutions, & above all, the media that shapes public opinion.
I'd like to thank you a lot for the suggestion you put in your conclusion. Indeed, we have to consider this alternative in our plan for the upcoming months. I'll definitely add this suggestion to the list of suggestions I get from people abroad, to present it to our movements here. As sometimes, when all the doors seems closed in our face, we only need a view from someone who's outside the box to get a clue of where to head next :)
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Milkyway123
9 years ago
Why not pretend to play ball and devise a ten-year plan to reach a tenth of a goal? I mean, as you have written; people are easily manipulated and it becomes even more easier when they are poor and uneducated. Economics and education go hand in hand. A country needs stability and safety to build structure. And when you have structure, you can rise and challenge the status quo.
The development in Iran society is a very good example of what I am talking about; the children of the revolutionaries are all grown up, educated and living good lives, analyzing the outside world and have formed their own POVs about the world - which is not in line with the revolutionaries of the '79.
Regarding al-Sisi, I must admit I have gotten the impression that the man is lesser than previous evils before him and that he might be what Egypt needs for the time being. The question is what his goals are. I have read about many reforms he wants to make and he seems moderate in his views. If things are as bad as they were before, as you say, I must ask; can you really see so much change after only 2 years in office?
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Tnushi
9 years ago
No, Milkyway, the situation is horribly deteriorating since July 2013. Oppression has far exceeded the oppression we faced during Mubarak presidency. At least, during Mubarak time, not many of the activists were in jail, & we had some given space to express our opinion & opposition in the streets, & we might have been able to start building the structure & awareness among people in the streets. Now, it's impossible to do that, I don't know how to exemplify the situation now to you, but now, we can't even hold a simple stand in a small narrow street, or we'll get jailed. Many activists are in jail, & the military is leaving absolutely no space for opposition, & not even for holding any events in the streets, like awareness campaigns. It's holding its rule right now with steel & fire, we're living a time of oppression that Egypt has never seen during a whole century!
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