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Thursday 17 February 2011
This question arises because the Egyptians, having ousted Mubarak, are now fragmenting in the post-revolution phase, and appear to be losing the battle for real change in their country's constitution.
The new stage brings new, more complicated challenges.
The Armed Forces Supreme Council, the body of top generals that now rules the country after Mubarak's ouster last Friday, has laid out a transition that emphasizes speed, not the sweeping democratic change the protesters want. The military has left the remains of Mubarak's ruling party to dominate the caretaker government and the levers of power, including the powerful police forces.
The organizers fear that unless the ruling party is broken and major change guaranteed, Egypt can fall back into an authoritarian rule, a Mubarak regime without Mubarak...
Also, the protest coalition is trying to fend off fragmentation that has plagued past reform movements, which tended to coalesce behind a single figure in a personality cult and then fall apart over personal disputes.
The new ruling generals urged the protesters to form their own political party. But the coalition refuses, saying a party now would bring out the divisions among them and break their bond of common demands.
And what about the man who galvanized the crowds? He is keeping his distance, hoping for ideas through a new website:
The coalition tried to bring in Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who worked on a Facebook page that rallied hundreds of thousands of Egyptians behind the protests. But he has decided to work independently. He has set up a webpage to gather suggestions of what Egyptians think should be done now — so far collecting at least 37,000 entries.
But ideas – although vital – are useless if the process stifles real change:
The military has also only suspended the constitution, not dissolved it. It appointed a panel of legal experts that has 10 days to draw up just enough changes to the constitution to allow a multiparty election.
Where is America and the European Union when oppressed people need real, constructive, nitty gritty help to transform gains from protest into lasting political democracy?
Let's hope that in twenty years' time historians do not look back on the years 2011-2021 as the Lost Decade for Democracy in the Third World.
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