Thursday, December 6, 2012

In Egypt the elite may have changed, but the revolution continues


The struggle against a state that seeks to deny its people any genuine empowerment is playing out on the streets of Heliopolis

in Cairo
guardian.co.uk,
The vast majority of Egyptians have been told throughout history that they are little more than interlopers in the closed rooms where decisions over their lives, community and environment are made; this is a nation where the political elite has always viewed the wider population as so many static pieces, devoid of agency and in need of being controlled and pacified through a fluid web of top-down munificence and brutal repression.

That authoritarian conception of the state remained entrenched regardless of the differing ideologies and motivations of those who ruled, from colonial officials to the post-1952 military dictatorship, from Hosni Mubarak's kleptocrats to the army junta that managed the so-called "transition" to democracy.

And it remains today, under the rule of a Muslim Brotherhood whose critique of Egypt's problems is moral rather than structural, whose vision of power is exclusionary instead of pluralistic......


Many Egyptians would be horrified at such sentiments, but their very presence on the palace wall indicates why this revolution is not disappearing any time soon. Times have changed and, both figuratively and literally, the country's population is at the gates of power. No elite that ignores this fact can expect to survive for long."

No comments: