The fall of the Egyptian dictatorship was the first prize in the Arab Spring. Democrats worldwide cheered, stereotypes about Arabs and democracy had to be revised and the revolution in the region moved on to Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. Unfortunately, the exciting and ultimately quite smooth transfer of power that we witnessed along the Nile has not been repeated in Tripoli and Damascus. The Libyan and Syrian leaderships learned lessons from Mubarak’s fall and decided to resist and not give in, whatever it takes. Each day pictures keep pouring in, showing the horrors of bloody fighting in Libya and Syria; on the one hand are people who are sick and tired of their autocratic leaders, while on the other are the Gadaffi and Assad regimes who prefer repression to reform.
In the meantime, away from the spotlight, Egyptians are trying to cope with post-revolutionary challenges. This process is as important as the spectacular events of a few months ago but the logic of modern media means that one hardly hears about it outside Egypt or specialized websites by Arab speaking pundits. Last week, all of a sudden, Tahrir Square was back in the news. As if nothing had changed since February, we saw riot police beating demonstrators. Immediately, my Twitter timeline was flooded with angry tweets by some of the old protesters who had played such an important part in informing the world about the Egyptian uprising against Mubarak in February. Ironically, this time around the people being beaten up were the relatives of the martyrs who had died a few months ago. The families had organized a sit-in at Tahrir Square to push for an immediate start to a trial against the former president and members of his family. It was a reminder that some things had changed in Egypt, but others had remained the same.
When Mubarak was forced to resign on Feb. 11, he turned over power to the Egyptian army. From then on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (known by its acronym SCAF), an 18-member body composed entirely of high-ranking commanders, was in charge. SCAF, headed by 76-year-old Field Marshall Mohammed Tantawi, was thrust into a political role for which it had little preparation. In the five months since taking power Tantawi was forced to meet some of the revolution’s key demands, but other crucial requests still remain unfulfilled. A few days ago the Al Jazeera English website presented an extremely informative scorecard of SCAF’s performance, making it abundantly clear that Egypt still has a long way to go before it can satisfy the democratic demands of its people. On a positive note there have been the arrests and trials of some regime officials, the dissolution of Mubarak’s hated National Democratic Party and a public referendum on an interim constitution. But the to-do list is discouragingly long. A state of emergency has not been lifted and parliamentary and presidential elections have been postponed several times. The most frustrating broken promise has been a complete failure to protect demonstrators and reign in the police. According to activists, over recent months up to 10,000 civilians have been arrested with many of them being heavily beaten with cables and electric shock batons. Central Security Forces have not been subject to reforms and were involved in the breaking up of last week’s Tahrir Square protests, leaving more than 1,000 people injured.
There are fears that the military may try to hold onto its own kind of executive authority, one general recently suggesting that in the new constitution the military should be exempted from budgetary oversight and be granted power to intervene in political affairs. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Let’s hope that the Egyptian revolutionaries manage to keep up the pressure on their temporary rulers and force them to make a clean break from the Mubarak era. Real progress in Egypt would also show brave Libyan and Syrian democratic activists that the region is able to move forward once the violent old regimes have been removed from power.
