In his 1954 essay, “Philosophy of the Revolution”, Gamal Abdel-Nasser recounts his memories of the early days of the 1952 Revolution. He says his meetings with civilian politicians, to whom he intended to hand over power, were a disappointment. All the intellectuals, party chiefs and heads of civil organisations with whom he met were mainly interested in self-promotion and critical of others. If you ask one of them about fishing in Hawaii, Nasser said, the answer would invariably start with the first person pronoun “I”, as the interlocutor proceeded to talk about everything except fishing or Hawaii. It was Nasser's low esteem for this elite, which he denounced as bickering and selfish, that encouraged him to keep the military in power. The same thing happened again after the 2011 revolution. A lot has changed since the revolution, except that the trinity of Egyptian politics — the military, the seculars and the Muslim Brotherhood — still dominates the scene. It was clear that the military, after 60 years in power, was ready to go back to its barracks and that the Muslim Brotherhood was determined to take over and start putting its big plan in motion. Only the seculars seemed clueless. For all their activism in the streets and in public squares, the seculars were unprepared for power. When the military asked them to choose a prime minister, they settled for Essam Sharaf, once a member of the now disbanded National Democratic Party (NDP), a prominent figure in the NDP Policies Committee, and a minister under Hosni Mubarak. The secular elite was busy with other things, such as how to handle the youth who decided that attacking the Ministry of Interior from Mohamed Mahmoud Street mattered more than the political administration of the country. The secular elite couldn't also make up its mind on whether to go into an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in the parliamentary elections or run independently. As a result, the religious group found itself spearheading a “democratic alliance” in the parliament. Before long, the moment of truth came. In the presidential elections, the secular groups failed to agree on one presidential candidate, and were dumbfounded when Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik turned out to be the finalists. At which point, the choice was between the Brotherhood and the military, or between theocracy and bureaucracy. The revolution had stalled. At this moment, confusion multiplied. The seculars split into three groups. One group decided to annul their votes, another group went for Shafik to keep the Brotherhood at bay, and a third group still — some say the largest — backed the Muslim Brotherhood on the mistaken assumption that it was a moderate group that was demonised by the Mubarak regime. Not long after Morsi took office, the seculars — who started the revolution — discovered that they had delivered the country into the hands of theocracy. The Egyptian seculars did what the Iranian seculars did when they backed Khomeini to get rid of the shah, or what the German liberals did when they backed Hitler to revitalise Germany. It was a wrong move, as everyone soon realised. It was only a matter of time before Morsi's “advisers” began quitting one by one, saying that no one was asking for their opinion. Meanwhile, the state was being hijacked through a theocratic constitution, an illegitimate constitutional assembly and a marauding constitutional declaration. Everything suggested that Egypt was going the way of Iran. Again, the youths of Tamarod came to the rescue of the country through a popular revolution that had the backing — controversial as that may be — of the army. So we ended having a revolution against the revolution, or a second wave of the revolution, or a correction of the revolution, all of which boils down to a simple truth: theocracy was over. The secular elite was back again into the picture. This time, the youth and the military seem to have more say. The Supreme Constitutional Court head became president of the republic. The vice president, Mohamed Al-Baradei, was the first politician to publicly speak in favour of revolution and complete change. The current cabinet is a secular blend of people who worked with all previous regimes, from Mubarak to Morsi. But the story is far from over. Now the Muslim Brotherhood is determined to throw a spanner in the wheels of the state, and its defiance of the state may end up splitting the secular elite in two: the realists and the idealists. The idealists think of politics as a utopia in which well-intentioned groups help one another, communicating endlessly and patiently, doing all they can to integrate the Muslim Brotherhood into the fabric of the nation. The idealists, of course, are opposed to military rule, but this remains a moot point at present since the military is yet to express any desire to rule. The only problem with the idealists is that they seem to be willing to accept the current reality, which is that the country is kept in a holding pattern by the Muslim Brotherhood's actions. The realists recognise the power aspect of politics and are aware that the balance of power is crucial. For the first time in modern Egyptian history, the balance of power in this country has tilted in favour of the seculars. Although the realists are willing to have the Muslim Brotherhood participate in the ongoing political process, they are only willing to do that in accordance with the terms of the secular state. The Muslim Brotherhood must not be allowed to earn while out of office the very things the nation denied it when in office. This fracture in the body of the seculars is not an easy one to address, as the ongoing acrimonious debate in the press suggests. But it is on the outcome of this debate that the future of the entire country rests.
