The Egyptian Crisis: Analysis of reality
The Egyptian crisis has gone beyond attracting the attention of social, economic and political researchers to drowning the non-politicized citizen who found himself in the midst of a fierce conflict between right and wrong. This ordinary citizen once felt that he was reborn anew at the very early moment of the outbreak of January 25 Revolution when he was chanting loudly: Bread, Freedom, Dignity, and Justice.
Undoubtedly, the situation in Egypt, which is considered the cornerstone of the Arab world and the Middle East, has its positive or negative effect on the situation in the whole region. Today, everyone knows that the greatest challenge to Egypt is to remain under the rule of Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, who represents the counter-revolution in the region. Al-Sisi’s regime did not only terminate the values of the revolution and kill the dream of ‘Bread, Freedom, Dignity, and Justice’, but it is even threatening Egypt’s existence on the world’s map. The first step of Egypt’s fragmentation occurred when Al-Sisi gave up Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia and the Zionist administration for a handful of “rice” [mockingly referring to money], and for ensuring the satisfaction of his masters so that he could remain in power.
Roots of the Egyptian Crisis
In this section, we will deal with the roots of the Egyptian crisis, which all attempts to resolve it over the past few years have failed because of lack of a clear vision and absence of the Egyptian people’s participation as a major revolutionary fuel, due to people’s frustration.
Here, we do not cry over a revolution we have lost but we try to explain the situation in order to find the path and mechanisms of solution, as well as to learn lessons from past events:
1- Division and self-destruction
For the first time, perhaps in the history of Egypt, the society has been divided, even within the same family. A few days ago, a girl appeared on a TV channel, run by the military intelligence service, insulting her brother who was killed by the killer’s (Sisi’s) security arms, whose only task has become punishing the Egyptians and eliminating the country’s over-population that they believe it hampers all their dreams. This girl abused her family and her martyr brother for nothing but only because one of the disciples of Satan instructed her to do so for spoiling the minds of the Egyptian people.
Undoubtedly, such cases should instigate a new revolution to end this state of division in the Egyptian society.
Unfortunately, both supporters and opponents of the regime accuse the Egyptian people of being behind all the calamities that the country is going through.
In fact, peoples are the fuel of revolutions and change; and without them, heralds of revolutions remain mere demonstrations, such as the events of April 6, 2008 which remained as they were ‘protests by Al-Mahalla workers’, without the participation of the whole Egyptian people all over the country. But in the January 25 revolution, the Egyptian people gathered under the chants of ‘Bread, Freedom, Dignity, and Justice’, and revolutionaries for the first time held a sit-in in front of the Republican Palace, where they watched deposed President Mubarak while escaping in his helicopter.
The Egyptian people participated in almost all revolutionary activities (along with activists) as well as democratic practices such as the referendum on the constitution and the parliamentary and presidential elections, as the first fair elections in Egypt.
However, Al-Sisi exploited the people’s fair demands on June 30, including their call for early presidential elections, and staged his military coup against the first democratically elected civilian president.
We want to emphasize here that the Egyptian people never gave up any calls for participation in revolutionary or democratic activities. However after on June 30 the July 2013 military coup, people realized that they were deceived, and decided to punish everyone through showing indifference to everything in light of absence of a clear vision and sincere calls so that they could take to the street again.
In fact, Al-Sisi blocked all political channels in Egypt in an unprecedented way. Even during Mubarak’s era, there was a little margin for political participation. This had its bad impact on the Egyptian crisis in:
First: Frustrating those who adopt the idea of the gradual change through elections, as the dictator won’t allow holding free elections.
Second: Obstructing any hope in thinking of possible solutions for the crisis. Most of the elites who once influenced the Egyptian street are now out of the people’s accounts completely due to frustration.
Third: The economic crisis that Egypt is going through makes Egyptians preoccupied with earning a living under an unprecedented poverty level, as if the putschists in Egypt are avenging the Egyptians for their revolution against their former representative, Mubarak, in 2011. Even the elites who try to create an integrated vision for reaching a solution find themselves unable to formulate a populist economic discourse that brings the Egyptians together again. Therefore, the Egyptian crisis appears to be too difficult to resolve under the current circumstances. However, there must be a way out. This is what we will try to discuss in the next part of the article ( 1) .
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Footnotes:
(1) The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of EIPSS.
