During the 20th and 21st century, Egypt underwent three revolutions: the 1919 Revolution, which was against the British occupation of Egypt, and the Tahrir Square revolution that took off on 25 January 2011, and that of 30 June two and a half years later. Both of the latter were against autocratic Egyptian rulers. While the 1919 Revolution reaped its fruits and reached its goals, the Tahrir Square revolution drowned in a state of chaos and continuation of autocratic rule and was followed by the 30 June Revolution that deposed former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood who sank in the illusion that electing him president gave him a free hand in ruling the country. This revolution is still crawling to realise its goals, while Muslim Brotherhood acts of terrorism are preventing the government from stabilising the country ahead of new presidential elections. The 1919 revolution was sparked by the struggle of many patriotic Egyptians. Egypt, with its Suez Canal serving as a strategic path between the five continents, made England worried about securing its interests in its Asian colonies, especially India. At that time Egypt was a colony of the Othmani Sultanate since 1517 that pushed Egypt into a new dark age. The sultan ruled Egypt through viceroys who were mostly corrupted. In the year 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt by sea, in order to — among other things — take control of the Suez Canal, thus preventing England, France's enemy at the time, from using it. The French military campaign in Egypt was not successful and it lasted three years only. At the end of it, in 1801, the Othmani sultan deployed an army from his own troops and from some of his colonies, including Albania, an Islamic country in Europe, to kick the French out of Egypt. Mohamed Ali, a citizen of Albania, was within his country's army that came by naval ships.
After the return of the French army to France, Mohamed Ali decided to stay in Cairo with an eye on the viceroy job and he got it along with the title of Pasha. Ali, a talented man with great aspirations for Egypt, built a high system of education, a flourishing economy and a strong army. Historians gave him full credit as “the aspirant of Egypt's renaissance”.
At the end of the Orabi Revolution against Khedive Tewfik, a descendent of Mohamed Ali, England became concerned about the ability of the Egyptian army to secure the Suez Canal and about the deterioration of the Egyptian economy as a result of heavy debts incurred by Khedive Ismail, Tewfik's father, to cover his overspending on the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal, and building Egyptian infrastructure in order to make Egypt, in Ismail's words, “a piece of Europe”. Ismail had to sell Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal Company to England for less than its market value, to pay part of his debts. As it couldn't wait any longer, the British government decided to invade Egypt. General Ahmed Orabi, a national patriot since his revolt against Khedive Tewfik, led the Egyptian army that fought with courage, but was defeated by the much stronger British army. In 1882, that army occupied Alexandria first, then Cairo, and the Suez Canal Zone. The British army of occupation was a barbaric one and the British commissioners in Cairo were the actual rulers of the country.
Mustafa Kamel, a young Egyptian lawyer, devoted his life to the struggle against the British occupation and later on formed the National Party. His efforts were not only directed to end the occupation, but also to establish a legislative body to enact laws to protect national interests, to make education free for all and to make Arabic the official language in Egypt. He was famous for his saying, “There is no despair where there is life, and there is no life where there is despair,” which became the slogan of Egyptians in their struggle for independence.
Kamel's poor health ended in his death in 1908. In spite of efforts by Mohamed Farid, his successor, who was a prosecutor and who spent his fortune to support the movement, the latter lost its vitality and resilience, and the next 10 years were a preparatory period for the 1919 Revolution.
Saad Zaghloul, also a lawyer who practiced law without a law degree, which was allowed at the time, while he later earned one from France, continued the struggle for independence following Kamel's path. He founded Al-Wafd Party to set up a platform for the struggle for independence and enjoyed wide popularity, especially in rural provinces where his roots were. Although he was married to the daughter of prime minister Mustafa Fahmi Pasha, who was suspected collaborating with the British commissioner in Egypt, Zaghloul felt that it was his duty to continue Kamel's path in the struggle for independence.
At that time, prime minister Hussein Roushdy Pasha was also exerting his government's efforts to negotiate with the British government to grant Egypt independence. As he was about to travel to London heading a delegation to negotiate national demands with the British, Zaghloul, along with Abdel-Aziz Fahmi and Ali Shaarawi, two among others who shared him his struggle for Egypt, went on 13 November 1918 to meet Sir Reginald Wingate, the British high commissioner in Egypt, to demand that Britain fulfill its promise to give Egypt independence. The British government had maintained that Egypt was not ready to be independent. Wingate used caution in his answer to Zaghloul, but also advised his government to commence negotiations and to allow an Egyptian delegation to present its case in a peace conference that was about to convene in Paris, as requested by the Egyptians. The British government firmly refused.
Sensing trouble from Zaghloul and his fellow patriots, the British government, on 8 March 1919, instructed the commander of its occupying army in Cairo to arrest Zaghloul and three of his other patriots — Mohamed Mahmoud, Ismail Sedki and Hamad Al-Basel — and put them into exile in Malta, a British colony, which was done 8 March 1919.
As the news spread like a wildfire, millions of Egyptians — men and women, Christians and Muslims, along with many Egyptian Jews, professors, teachers and students, lawyers and doctors and other professionals, in addition to throngs from Cairo and other provinces — simultaneously and violently demonstrated in the streets demanding the release and return of Zaghloul and the others, the end of the British occupation, and granting independence to Egypt. They were met with a brutal response by British soldiers who used live ammunitions and bayonets. Many Egyptians were killed, wounded or arrested. The crackdown continued, but did not stop the demonstrations.
Local and international newspapers covered the revolution and, along with European governments, harshly criticised the British government for its barbaric crackdown on civilian demonstrators. Feeling the embarrassment, especially with the deterioration of its prestige after it lost to the United States its rank as the world superpower, maintained before World War I, the British government was compelled to start negotiations with the same Egyptians it exiled, along with a delegation from the Egyptian government. On 28 February 1922, the British government issued a communiqué dubbed the “28 February Proclamation”, granting Egypt independence but with four reservations. One of them was to keep a small army unit in Cairo and the Suez Canal Zone. Zaghloul and other Egyptian leaders accepted the deal until they would be able to change it.
The first democratic constitution was drafted by a committee that included representatives of political and religious factions and professionals. The constitution was put to a referendum and then enacted in 1923. In spite of a few mishaps, this constitution was far better than all the constitutions that followed. As a result, the Sultan Ahmad Fouad, son of Khedeve Ismail, a descendant of Mohamed Ali, who was ruling the country, changed his title to King Fouad I followed by conducting elections for the two houses of parliament. The prime minister was the head of the party that won the majority of the seats in the House of Deputies. Zaghloul participated in the new Egyptian cabinet and later on became prime minister after his party won a large majority.
Under the constitution, the king was only a symbol, while actual power was in the hands of the prime minister who was accountable for his actions before the House of Deputies. But both King Fouad I and his son, King Farouk I, used to interfere in governance, using authority given to the king by the constitution to remove the prime minister or dissolve parliament and conduct a new election. Only by the bravery of a few good members of parliament, and of the press, was the new democratic process saved from disaster.
After independence, Egypt enjoyed democracy until 1952. On 23 July of that year, former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser led a coup d'état (Nasser called it the people's revolution) that overthrew King Farouk I, abolished the 1923 Constitution and dissolved parliament. He muzzled any criticism of his rule by arresting many of the old politicians and his opponents, and dismissing four of my professors at Fouad I University's Faculty of Law (Nasser changed its name to Cairo University) thus starting an era of iron fist rule that extended more than 60 years.
Former president Hosni Mubarak's autocratic rule lasted 30 years. He decided not to realise that enough was enough, aiming to keep the presidency in the family by making arrangements for his elder son to succeed him. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. As everyone remembers, thousands of young Egyptians who were communicating with each other through Google and Facebook, demonstrated in Tahrir Square on 25 January 2011, demanding Mubarak's departure. Lest it lose the monetary benefits and influence the military enjoyed under Mubarak, if a civilian democratic government succeeded him, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) hijacked the Tahrir Square revolution and deposed president Mubarak in a clandestine coup. The young revolutionaries accepted this after SCAF promised to stabilise the country, uphold democracy, and improve the economy. Neither SCAF nor its governments did anything to fulfill these promises to the revolutionaries. Actually, a state of chaos dominated and SCAF continued to rule the country with an iron fist, following in the footsteps of its predecessors in the last 60 years. It made its so-called constitutional declarations be included in new constitutional amendments, which allowed the military to take over to maintain security without subjecting their rule to popular referendum.
The SCAF took time to establish a democratic system in the new constitution. Most preposterously, the military, as reported, arranged to have former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood — an ally of the United States that provided the group with millions of dollars that exceeded its aid to Egypt — win the presidential elections, albeit by a very small margin, mostly by the vote of illiterate people, in spite of the group's history of violence and that it was dissolved by Nasser.
President Morsi's authoritarian ways and efforts to monopolise power led to a new revolution by members of the Tamarod group on 30 June 2013, who managed to collect more than 30 million signatures from people all over the country demanding early elections, and then asked then General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to help them to depose Morsi, which he effectively did. A new constitution was voted for and the country is preparing for presidential and parliamentary elections. So what is next for Egypt?
There is no doubt that the onus will be on the newly elected president to exert strenuous efforts to address the country's problems: to put the country on track and restore Egypt's leadership in the Arab world. This will not be achieved unless the new president and his government secure the people's lives and homes, end acts of terrorism by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic extremists, improve the economy, reduce poverty, inequality and unemployment levels, and maintain stability to attract investors and tourism.
The country cannot live on financial aid from some Arab countries. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will not extend loans to Egypt unless it agrees to take certain measures that would be hard to implement immediately, such as eliminating subsidies, which would cause upheavals as happened during former president Anwar Al-Sadat's rule. American aid is mediocre and most of it goes to the military and not the economy. It should be rejected by Egypt to stop any pressure by the US government that is only willing to help Egypt as long as the Muslim Brotherhood stayed in power and as long as Egypt fulfils its obligations in the peace treaty with Israel.
The new president should put provisions of the constitution into effect and establish a democratic system where freedom of speech, the press and assembly, and of religion, are protected under a due process of law. But let us face it, attaining democracy in Egypt will take time, as happened in all democracies, and cannot be realised under a state of chaos. Nonetheless, it is the best path.
But there will be no real democracy when a large percentage of voters are illiterate — not only they cannot read or write their names, or the names of candidates running for president or parliament, they are not able to understand the candidates' programmes, and are easily bribed and brainwashed. Illiteracy is a disgrace for the country and for the candidates for public office who win their seats by the support of illiterate persons. I am glad that the new constitution requires the elimination of illiteracy. But to my knowledge there is no legislation enacted yet to establish procedures in this regard.
As I demonstrated above, the 1919 Revolution achieved its goal because the revolutionaries then made the change themselves, which is not the case with the Tahrir Square and Tamarod group revolutions. Those young people should bear responsibility for not achieving their goals. They did not learn the lessons of the 1919 Revolution. After the success of the Egyptian uprising of 25 January 2011, the young Egyptian revolutionaries made the mistake of not forming political parties and running for parliament and the presidency. The 30 June revolutionaries repeated the same mistake. Thomas Friedman expressed a similar conclusion in his column in The New York Times.
Voting power is a symbol of government by the people. Every US president and every prime minister of Britain and of other democracies owes his election to voters who have power to replace him or her on elections day. Thus, a coup d'état is unimaginable in those democracies. Stability is the path for democracy, said Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a prominent Arabic daily newspaper in London, rightfully 21 March.
We have to bear in mind that it is easy to be a tyrant. But it is difficult to be a democratic ruler. In his widely read book, The Genius of Omar, about the second Islamic caliph, the famous Egyptian writer and historian Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad pointed out that the wise ruler is the one who knows how to consult, and that Omar was the perfect example. That is the difference between a democratic ruler and a tyrant. After years of despair, should Egypt expect happier days on the horizon? The writer is an international lawyer.
