The Great Egyptian Revolution

AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE
Contributed by W.

Dr. Azmi Bishara

"Exiting the Tunnel
In Egypt
Reforms, Revolution, the President and the Vice President
Wisdom and Intelligence
On the Strategies of the Revolution and its Horizons

The Egyptian revolt was improvised, and powers with popular backing gravitated towards it in a natural way. The revolution is currently on its way to its objective, and I have never learned in the history of revolutions of a revolt that could bring out this many anti-regime demonstrators in so many cities at the same time. The revolution no longer needs proofs that it is popular, but it needs determination and a strategy to reach its objectives. The Egyptian regime is resisting its inescapable fate in all kinds of ways, including the spreading of rumors and lies, and intimidating people with the prospect of chaos, and even pretending to acquiesce to the demonstrators' demands when necessary, while calling them spies when it is useful to do so, and repressing them when it can.

We would be wrong to think that this is a matter of a person's stubbornness, or that it is a personal issue. The matter is not that of Mubarak's hard-headed personality, I can even venture and say that he no longer rules Egypt, and that Egypt is now effectively ruled by `Umar Suleiman and the newly-appointed Prime Minister Ahmad Shafeeq, and that they are both trying to consolidate themselves within the ruling elite and the state as symbols of the regime. The question is not that of an individual's intransigence and his personal character, but that of a ruling clique that is attempting to defend itself and its interests and to survive the ongoing struggle politically. It is a political, not a personal, matter.

This struggle will be decided once the regime realizes that it faces a choice between the continuation of the revolution until it gradually turns - by the force of things - into violent struggle, or the transition of authority through a transitory phase and the beginning of negotiations over how these conditions will be met. In the later case negotiations over the departure of the regime can be effectuated with anyone......."