| July 10, 2013 12:26 AM By Rami G. Khouri
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".......I am awed by Egypt and the Egyptians, who persevere in achieving on their great public stage that which no Arab country has ever achieved: citizens who define their state, their national values, their rights, and their governance system, in a political process of national self-determination that also will see them ultimately as sovereign. They quarrel and negotiate, bluff and boycott, dare and jab, spend hours in meetings and negotiations, and only occasionally shoot to kill. They mostly move ahead, but sometimes also sideways and backward.
New actors regularly take the stage, and are either validated or repudiated by the only force that matters: the will of the citizenry. That will is now being negotiated and defined in multiple acts on that great Egyptian stage, in competing public squares in the street, in media outlets, in the constitutional revision process that will start again soon, and finally in new elections for the presidency and the parliament. They forge ahead, undeterred by their own turbulence and self-inflicted traumas, keeping their eye on the great prize of constitutionalism, citizenship and sovereignty.
I stand in awe of Egypt and the Egyptians, humbled and buoyed by their quest to create the first modern Arab country that makes sense, because it is the result of the handiwork of its own citizens."
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