By Abdel Monem Said Aly
CAIRO: The victory of the Libyan revolution, the more-than-cosmetic reforms in Jordan and Morocco, and the escalation of revolutionary attempts to oust Bashar Assad in Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen signal that the wind is still blowing in the sails of the Arab spring.
However, the transformation is not easy and the spring is full of sandstorms. In Egypt, where the revolution has passed the point of overthrowing the regime, the post-revolution transition period reflects the enormity of the difficulties. The departure of President Hosni Mubarak from power launched a new era for the Egyptian revolution and certainly for Egypt. But by surrendering his powers to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Mubarak assured the continuity of the state as represented by three major institutions.
First, SCAF represents the sovereign rights of the president and his executive and legislative powers. Second, the judiciary has been in many ways part of the revolution as the revolutionaries have declared their intent to have a democratic system based on the rule of law. Third, the bureaucracy is historically the backbone of the Egyptian state and is ready to continue its mission under new leadership.
On the other side are the revolutionaries. First, the youth who launched the revolution but were soon to lose its leadership have evolved into a large number of coalitions and new political parties. Whatever the magnitude of the numbers, they reflect a highly-fragmented arena. Second, traditional political parties that worked as the formal and informal opposition to the Mubarak regime have reasserted themselves.
Third, a member of the traditional political opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been reinforced by new “Islamic” parties. On the more liberal side of the Brothers is the Wasat or “Middle” Party and on the more conservative side are the long imprisoned “Gamaat Islamia” and “Jihad” groups. Then there is the new power of the “Salafis” who advocate a strict implementation of Sharia. And fourth are all the non-party movements and civil society organizations that opposed Mubarak and his regime.
The organs of state and the revolutionary forces developed a formula that was summarized by the slogan: the people and the army are “one hand”. Diverse revolutionary groups defined the situation as follows: the people made the revolution but the army was the one that protected it. In many ways this definition of what took place in Egypt recognized the continuity of the Egyptian state and, simultaneously, the necessity for Egypt to go through a process of massive change. Yet the basis for political change in the country has become an issue of state under the watchful eyes of the revolution.
Given this marriage between the continuity of the state and the continuity of the revolution, it was inevitable that tensions would grow over a variety of issues. Local forces have started to take public affairs into their own hands, while minorities have worked to assert their rights and the protests of the pre-revolutionary period continue to drag the economy to a halt.
Three clusters of tension have grown over time. The first is related to what the country should do with the former regime and the crimes it committed during the revolution, particularly Mubarak and his family. After considerable tensions, the ex-president and his two sons were put on trial, along with 48 senior members of his regime and their families. In a sign of instability, no fewer than four government cabinets were formed between January and July — ironically, all containing ex-members of the now-dissolved National Democratic Party.
The second cluster of tensions has focused on the road to be taken during the transition period to civilian rule. These tensions were among different factions of the revolution, and between some of them and SCAF. While part of the revolutionaries, particularly liberals and those on the left of the Egyptian political spectrum, pushed for a program to create a kind of steering committee or presidential council made up of civilians and military personnel to run the affairs of the country, others —all the Islamic organizations plus the nationalists — opted for the continuation of SCAF to run the affairs of the country.
Linked to this division, the first group opted for electing a constitutional assembly to draft a new constitution for the country as a basis for legislative and presidential elections. The second group opted for a counter-process that begins by electing the chambers of the legislative branch that will be empowered to select a constitutional council to draft the new constitution. SCAF took the initiative and formed a committee to amend eight articles of the 1971 constitution and put them to a referendum, where they were approved on March 19, 2011 by a majority of 77.8 percent. These amendments basically reduced presidential powers and limited the president to two terms of four years each. Then the 1971 constitution was replaced by a constitutional declaration to cover the transition period. The referendum also confirmed the proposition of launching the transition by first electing the two legislative councils. In many ways, the results of the referendum codified the split in the revolutionary camp.
This led to the third cluster of tensions about how to deal with SCAF. Is it the political leadership of the country and as such open to criticism and accountable to the public? Or is it part of the army that should be honored for protecting the country and the revolution and as such constitutes a “red line” that revolutionaries may not cross. Again, while liberals and leftists took the first view and accused SCAF of favoring the Islamists, the latter adopted the second view. A new configuration in Egyptian politics began to emerge and create its own dynamic, altering between confrontation and accommodation. The roadmap for transition was finally accepted, as was an Azhar document based on a consensus regarding guidelines for a constitutional council that will maintain the characteristics of a civil state.
Daily events were also the focus of tensions, the latest of which involved events in north Sinai. While augmentation of the Egyptian military presence in area “C” was agreed, the response to the Israeli attack on an Egyptian security post was considered weak and inconsiderate of Egyptian lives. While the situation in Sinai is much more complicated than the Israeli dimension alone, it has reintroduced the Arab-Israel conflict into Egyptian domestic politics after it had long been — like all national security matters — the domain of the presidency. This is likely to complicate Egyptian domestic politics, Egyptian-Israeli and Egyptian-American relations, and the management of Egyptian national security and foreign policy.
Abdel Monem Said Aly is president of Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies in Cairo. This commentary is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with bitterlemons-international.org
