Back to Square One in Egypt?

How to Defeat (or Revive) a Revolution

AN EXCELLENT PIECE
by ESAM AL-AMIN
CounterPunch

"On Thursday June 14, the High Constitutional Court in Egypt will rule on two pending motions that may radically change the future course of Egypt and determine the fate of its remarkable – but unfinished- revolution. The two motions are the constitutionality of the political ban on the former regime senior officials, such as Gen. Ahmad Shafiq, the undeclared military’s candidate for president, and the constitutionality of last winter’s parliamentary elections. Each decision might drastically alter the power structure in the country, and possibly propel another revolution whose fate remains unclear.

But how did we get to this point of complete uncertainty?

History will show that the unity displayed by the Egyptian people during the eighteen revolutionary days in early 2011 was decisive in convincing the Egyptian military to dump Mubarak and side with the people......

It was also abundantly clear that, by the second week of the massive demonstrations across the country, the U.S. government encouraged the Egyptian military leaders to take matters into their hands after reaching the conclusion that the best way to keep Egypt in the U.S. orbit was to abandon Mubarak. Ever since that fateful day, the plan by the counter-revolutionary forces -internally and externally- has been to break up the unity of the revolutionary groups and gradually restore the old regime minus its most corrupt public faces.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which took the reign of power from Mubarak, recognized early on that the most powerful organized group within the revolutionary forces was the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). As a cautious social and religious movement, the MB is more reformist in nature than revolutionary. For decades, its objective has been to gradually reform the society towards an Islamically-oriented system of government based on its interpretation of Shari’a or Islamic law.

Realizing that it has a huge organizational advantage over other political parties especially the nascent revolutionary youth movements, the MB quickly broke ranks from these groups and reached a tacit understanding with SCAF to push for parliamentary elections ahead of rewriting the constitution or cleansing the state institutions from the loyal remnants of the old regime or the fulool.......

According to a well-informed Egyptian political analyst, when SCAF allowed for free and fair parliamentary elections last winter, its plan was to allow the groups associated with political Islam to get elected, since their popularity was indisputable. But more importantly SCAF never intended to transfer any meaningful executive or governmental power to the FJP or their allies so as to demonstrate to the electorate their impotence once in Parliament. In due course as the revolutionary spirit starts to wane and the support to the Islamic groups weakens, the plan was to invalidate last winter’s parliamentary elections and call for new ones in order to restore some of the power back to the fulool and other secular forces, thus substantially reducing the support and power of the Islamic groups.....

In short, there are four possible scenarios with regard to the outcome of the HCC rulings this week. Each one would most likely benefit a distinct and different political faction. They are.....

It is evident that SCAF has for over a year outfoxed all revolutionary groups, Islamic or secular. Depending on what scenario prevails on Thursday, it is equally clear that SCAF will have to either force their candidate on the Egyptians using all the tools of the “democratic process”, or take the country back to square one through a clever judicial ruse.

No matter what the military decides, the youth this time are determined not to put their trust in either the military or the political class but on their capacity to stay the revolutionary course until all their objectives are achieved. Hundreds of their pioneers, led by dozens of women including Asmaa Mahfouz and Nawwara Nagm, among the first to call for the January 25 demonstration that sparked the revolution, have been on hunger strike and continuous sit-in for over a week in the middle of Tahrir Square.

But now they are determined not to leave until their revolution is revived, the fulool are defeated, and the military return to their barracks."