Many have been claiming the right to represent or even to own Egypt's 25 January Revolution. Moreover, this claim has made many such forces or people act or react in a way that has reflected not just a false sense of superiority but also an illusory perception of their allegedly indispensable role in leading or maintaining the revolution and its course. Capitalising on these claims, such forces have repeatedly mobilised the masses to achieve their political and sometimes even personal gains. This abuse of the masses has not passed unnoticed, since the latter have gradually declined to participate in the endless Friday marches, starting with the famous confrontations with the army in July 2011. Since the second half of 2011, nearly all those claiming to be the representatives or owners of the revolution have started to distance themselves from the army, their partner in the 25 January Revolution. The three partners of the revolution, the youth vanguard, the masses and the army, have become delinked as a result, and the consensus that led to the revolution has been shattered. The masses have become disillusioned because of the inevitable derailment of the revolution, a serious outcome that has been manifested in many tragic events, such as those at Maspero and Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Cairo over recent years. Unsubstantiated ownership claims have been raised by many forces, up to the revolution's late-comer, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has used the slogans and objectives of the revolution in its political discourse both in power and even after its designation as a terrorist organisation. Historically and ideologically, the Brotherhood cannot be considered part of the revolution. Its conservative ideology, as well as its historical record of the initial appeasement of different ruling regimes, has been in sharp contradiction to its adoption of revolutionary paradigms or means. For example, in February 2011, and in response to former security chief Omar Suleiman's then carrot-and-stick approach, the Brotherhood issued a statement that called for a “constructive, productive and sincere dialogue” with the former Hosni Mubarak regime. Throughout the whole transitional period it has opportunistically misdirected events towards achieving its own short and long-term objectives. In sum, the Brotherhood has opportunistically abused the Egyptian Revolution in the same way that it has abused religion for political gains. Former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser called the Brotherhood the “merchants of religion,” and now it might be apt to call it the “merchants of the revolution”. However, the masses have successfully ended the Brotherhood's rule and any important future role for this terrorist organisation. Any claim of ownership of the revolution has become part of the organisation's dark history with its long array of falsifications and twisted facts. The young revolutionaries constituted the vanguard of the January Revolution, leading the masses through the 18 days prior to the ousting of former president Mubarak on 11 February 2011. Nearly all the political actors belonging to the older generations started to brand the youth activists as revolutionaries, these in turn behaving as if they were the indisputable owners of the revolution. This exclusive claim of ownership of the revolution has been advocated by many youth activists, a claim that has ultimately led to the formation of a plethora of revolutionary coalitions each projecting itself as the true representative of the January Revolution. But the fragmentation of the revolutionaries has deprived them of becoming the true leaders of the revolution. The failure to identify a true unifying leadership has illustrated the revolutionaries' ineptitude in leading the masses. Many of the young revolutionaries are the true representatives of their generation, one greatly impacted by processes of globalisation and individualisation. Moreover, these new generations have been inspired by the impacts of a sociopolitical context like that prevalent in many of the well-established democracies, where young people have focused on what has been described as “quality of life” issues such as environmental protection or human rights. Many such activists have become conscious of the need to safeguard these inviolable human rights even at the expense of jeopardising the stability of the state, its institutions and the entire society. It is true that the January Revolution aimed to secure human rights. However, it also aimed at achieving social justice through addressing widening social inequalities. Focusing on one objective at the expense of others has made many activists become mere whistle-blowers, not allowing them to become active in laying the foundations for a new socioeconomic order that intrinsically safeguards human rights. Similarly, some political forces and figures have given way to the delusion that they played a gigantic role in the revolution even before its inception. Certain media forums, intellectuals, writers and even political figures have behaved in the same fashion by claiming ownership of the revolution. Diverse figures across the political spectrum also constituted a coalition that endorsed ousted former president Mohamed Morsi first as a presidential nominee and then as president elect when the official announcement was delayed. This endorsement of Morsi as the revolution's nominee catastrophically misled many Egyptians. The three major trends of the false owners or representatives of the 25 January Revolution have obviously forgotten the masses, which had the major say in this glorious event. The masses have identified that such trends, with their respective opportunism, individualism and short-sightedness, have not been equipped to become their leaders. The voice of the masses was loud in the recent presidential elections when they chose Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, not belonging to or affiliated with any of these pseudo-representatives of the revolution, as the country's new president. In effect, the Egyptian masses thus restored their paramount yet often forgotten role as the true and only owners of the January Revolution. The writer is a political analyst.
