How We Can Save the Revolution in Four Steps

by Alaa El Aswany

Suppose you live in a building and in the apartment opposite you have a neighbour you can’t get on with. You’ve had numerous problems that have proved to you that this neighbour of yours is selfish and thinks only of his own interest. This neighbour talks about principles but often, for the sake of his own personal interest, he ignores the principles he talks about. So your relationship is troubled and you develop such an aversion to your neighbour that you no longer have anything to do with him. Then one night a fire breaks out in the house and the tongues of flame are spreading everywhere. Suddenly your neighbour bangs on your door and asks you to help him put out the fire. What do you do then? Do you tell him, “I’ll have nothing to do with you even if the whole building burns down with my children and your children inside”? Or do you take the gravity of the situation into account and join your neighbour in putting out the fire in order to save the building and the people living in it? The right choice is obvious and no two people would disagree what it is. This analogy summarizes the situation we are in now: Egypt is the building and the neighbour who gives his own interests preference over his duty and who has let us down many times is the Muslim Brotherhood. The current situation in Egypt is no less serious than the fire in the building. The Muslim Brotherhood, together with the military council, is responsible for the dark tunnel we are now fighting to get out of. The Brotherhood allied itself with the military and made the flawed constitutional amendments that it is now complaining about, while it was the Brotherhood that mobilized people to vote ‘yes’ in last year’s referendum to amendments they didn’t understand properly and that turned the referendum into a showdown between believers and infidels. The Muslim Brothers abandoned the revolutionaries at the time of the massacres at the Maspero building, in Mohamed Mahmoud Street and at the cabinet offices. They refrained from condemning the military council for these massacres, but rather condemned the revolutionaries, accusing them of thuggery and working for outside interests. It is the Muslim Brotherhood that hijacked the constitutional committee so that they could monopolize the process and write Egypt’s new constitution at their whim. They also tried to take control of the Central Audit Agency with a bill that would have given the speaker of parliament the power to appoint the head of the agency. These are all serious mistakes committed by the Muslim Brothers in order to serve their own narrow interests, and the price for them has been paid by the revolution, which has been obstructed and  unable to achieve its objection, and by the hundreds of dead, the thousands of injured and the Egyptian women abandoned by the Brotherhood when soldiers dragged them through the streets and abused them. The Muslim Brotherhood has finally discovered that all their political gains have been undermined because the military council wants to play them like puppets on strings. At that point the Brotherhood ran into conflict with the military, went back to revolution and passed the political exclusion bill that the revolutionaries had been advocating for ages. The Brotherhood went back to Tahrir Square, calling for the downfall of the military council. What should we do with the Brotherhood? Should we join hands with them and restore unity, recreating a firmly united revolutionary force as in the first days of the revolution? Or will any form of cooperation with the Brotherhood end as usual with them abandoning their principles, simply to serve their political interests? It’s not possible to answer this question without first understanding what’s happening in Egypt. Since the overthrow of Mubarak, for 14 months the military council has succeeded in obstructing the change advocated by the revolution, and Egyptians have been the victims of an organized campaign to empty the revolution of meaning, to abort and disfigure it, and to put pressure on Egyptians through various serious crises, all of them artificial: the breakdown in law and order, the shortages of foodstuffs and a crippling economic crisis. In the end, when life for Egyptians had become a living hell, Omar Suleiman was suggested for the presidency as if he were the man who would save Egyptians from all their troubles. Regardless of whether Omar Suleiman has been disqualified or not, the significance of his candidacy stands, and it betrays the intentions of the military council, which seems intent on finishing off the revolution and restoring the Mubarak regime at any price. What the presidential election commission is doing confirms that its rulings are political and not judicial, because everything takes place according to the wishes of the military council and not at all according to the law.  How could Omar Suleiman stand for the presidency before the many complaints against him have been investigated? How could Omar Suleiman obtain 50,000 endorsements in two days and why was he suddenly disqualified on trivial grounds that are not convincing? Is it credible that the head of General Intelligence miscounted the number of endorsements he submitted with his candidacy papers? Why hasn’t the election commission given the media details of the passport that proves that the mother of presidential hopeful Hafiz Abu Ismail was an American citizen? Its failure to do so can mean only one of two things: either it doesn’t have evidence that Abu Ismail’s mother had U.S. Citizenship, or it is being deliberately vague in order to provoke Abu Ismail’s supporters to go out into the streets in their thousands and create enough chaos to prevent elections taking place. How can the election commission accept the candidacy of Ahmed Shafik before the complaints against him have been examined? Thirty-five complaints accusing Shafik of wasting public money were submitted to the public prosecutor more than a year ago but not a single one has yet been investigated. The prosecutor’s office says it referred the complaints to the military judiciary and officials in the military judiciary say they have received no complaints against Shafik. Everything happening in Egypt shows that the military council is pushing us towards a preplanned scenario that will lead to one of two possibilities: either a candidate tied to the military council will win the presidency, bring the Mubarak regime back to life and enable the military council to control the levers of power from behind the scenes, or, if the military’s candidate cannot be imposed, there will be so many problems and such chaos that the presidential elections cannot practically go ahead and the military stays in power indefinitely. The Egyptian revolution is going through the hardest moment in its history. The danger threatening the revolution is like a great fire that has broken out in a building full of people, and so our national duty obliges us to save the revolution, and thus can only be achieved through the following steps:

    First, the Muslim Brotherhood should make a frank apology for the serious mistakes that they have made and that have put us in this mess. They should also provide proof of their good intentions by creating real consensus in the committee drafting the constitution – a consensus that satisfies all shades of opinion and gives the constitution real legitimacy. In return the non-Islamist revolutionary forces should accept the Brotherhood’s apology immediately and unite with the Brotherhood to restore the unity of the revolutionary front, which is a basic prerequisite for saving the revolution.

    Second, we must all learn how to get along with those who disagree with us and respect their rights. The liberals and leftists must learn that the Brotherhood and the salafists are not a bunch of fascists with reactionary ideas., but patriotic citizens who took part in the revolution and some of whom gave their lives for it. They have an Islamist programme and however much we may disagree with it we should respect it and defend their right to advocate it and present it to Egyptians. In return the Brotherhood and the salafists should understand that they cannot take sole responsibility for Egypt, even if they are the majority, and that they can never change Egypt’s character to turn it into an Afghanistan or a Saudi Arabia. They must understand that the liberals are not enemies of Islam, libertines, degenerates or Western agents. In fact many of them are no less pious than the Islamists but they are simply not convinced by the Islamists’ political agenda. The bitter struggle between the two wings of the revolution (the Islamists and the liberals) has been one of the major factors enabling the military council to obstruct change in Egypt.

    Third, all the signs indicate that the presidential elections will not be free and fair. Once the unity of the revolutionaries is restored, pressure must be put on the military council to provide real guarantees that the elections are fair. Article 28,  which makes the rulings of the electoral commission immune from appeal,  must be scrapped, because it perversely defies logic and the law. In fact it contradicts Article 21 of the constitutional declaration, which bans immunity for administration decisions of any kind. The campaign budgets of the presidential candidates must all be subject to monitoring by the Central Audit Agency and every candidate must declare where the funding comes from. There must be real guarantees that the state apparatus will stay away from intervening in the elections, so that voters are not rounded up by decree to vote for the candidate favoured by the military council, as happened when endorsements were submitted for Ahmed Shafik and Omar Suleiman. Candidates affiliated with the Mubarak regime must be disqualified in line with the political exclusion law passed by parliament. There must be an immediate investigation into the complaints against Ahmed Shafik and Omar Suleiman. Without fair rules ensuring transparency, equal opportunities and the rule of law, the presidential elections will become another trap into which the revolution falls and we will all pay a heavy price. Holding fair elections might be a tall order but it can be done if we all unite for that purpose. Experience has shown that the military council moves in the right direction only under popular pressure. It has been mass rallies alone that have made the military council respond to any of the revolution’s demands, from putting Mubarak on trial to disqualifying Omar Suleiman’s candidacy..

    Four, the institutions of the state are subject to the military council, from the civilian police and the state security agency (which is now working at full strength) to the military police who dragged Egyptian women along the street and killed young revolutionaries and certain cooperative judges  responsible for the scandalous escape of the Americans accused in the foreign funding case. In other words, the military council is still using all Mubarak’s instruments to control events. On the other hand, the revolutionary forces, if they unite, will have two tools for change for the first time: Tahrir Square and parliament. Tahrir Square is the general assembly of the Egyptian people who made the revolution and it can always impose the will of the people. Parliament will also be an important tool to protect the revolution and achieve the revolution’s objectives. We have seen how the Mubarak regime was shaken when parliament passed the law excluding leading members of the old regime from political life. By uniting, the revolutionaries will have two tools capable of thwarting the plan now being put into effect to terminate the revolution. The revolution faces a real danger and we have to choose. Either we keep apart, exchanging accusations and insults, while the Mubarak regime, God forbid, manages to finish off the revolution once and for all, or else we overcome our differences and unite immediately in order to achieve the revolutionary goals for which thousands of Egyptians have paid the price with their blood. The revolution will continue until Egypt is free of despotism and, God willing, it will triumph.         

    Democracy is the solution.                                    

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