A new spirit was born in Egypt as a result of the 25 January revolution, one that should be respected and allowed to grow, writes Wahid Abdel-Meguid* The young revolutionaries that led the 25 January revolution should be proud of themselves. They should also know that the gates of reform they opened will not be closed. Thanks to them, Egypt has launched onto a new phase and its politics will never be the same again. They should be proud of what they have done, and they should not remain hostage to one slogan or a single demand. The horizons they have opened for reform are incredibly wide, and because of them a new era is dawning upon this country, a new spirit has been born, not unlike the spirit we experienced in October 1973. A barrier has now been removed, opening the way for society to move forward, showing the government what to do, and ensuring that tomorrow will be different from yesterday. Something new is being born in this country. You can hear it in the tone of the government. This is the real thing. Never before in Egypt's modern history has a prime minister apologised to the people. But Ahmed Shafik has done just that, and in full view of the international media. The new prime minister has apologised for the shameful attack on the protesters. According to Vice President Omar Suleiman, those who planned the attack wanted to spoil the impact of the president's speech the previous Tuesday night. Shafik's government cannot be blamed for the attack, and yet the prime minister was willing to apologise to the nation. The attack was waged by corrupt and despotic forces wishing to take the country back to the pre-25 January era. The prime minister promised to bring the perpetrators to justice. Then he offered an implicit apology for delays in starting the dialogue. In an interview with a private television station, Shafik said that "I have this to say to those who accuse us of being late in holding the dialogue: we were wrong, and we're going to set things right." A statesman who apologises to his nation is one who deserves respect and trust. It is refreshing to hear, since it has been a long time since politicians treated the public with anything but disdain. Our society had been reduced to just so many numbers, and citizens were treated as if they were a liability, not an asset, to the nation. A government that respects its people should listen to them, and indeed thank them, when they protest. Remarkably, Omar Suleiman did just that, thanking the 25 January revolutionaries and calling them the "spark that brought reform". He did suggest that they stop the protests in Tahrir Square, but by this he did not mean that they should just go home and disappear from the scene. What he said was that the state needs time to set things right. The monopolistic tendencies of Egyptian officialdom are dying before our eyes. The state that acted as if its interests were more important than those of the people is now a thing of the past. The state that treated people with disrespect and that refused to heed calls for reform had set itself up for failure. The outcome could have been a revolution without boundaries, a kind of destructive chaos of frightening proportions. The Egyptian poet Salah Abdel-Sabour once wrote, "People of our city, worse horror than this could come." Since Abdel-Sabour wrote these lines, there have been many more such warnings, and all apparently fell on deaf ears. Instead, the regime stoked the fires of discontent, and it reaped what it had sown. We are fortunate that the day of reckoning we all anticipated turned out to be a revolution by the young. We are lucky that the worst we feared came about in the form of an uprising that has created a new spirit in the country. The revolution by the young people of this country has protected us from the horrors that were heading our way. The revolution has spared us the chaos that mismanagement was bound to create, and it has defended us against a security vacuum that hit us almost without notice. It is frightening to imagine what could have happened had the country's young people not been standing by to protect the nation from such a security vacuum. Instead, a new spirit has been born, and this spirit is what motivated the young people of this country to stand guard when their families and districts were under threat. To thank them for their actions, they deserve complete transparency from the government. They deserve to be told why such a security vacuum was allowed to happen in the first place. Transparency is the first real test for the new policy that is emerging in this country. To show respect for this country and for this nation, transparency must be upheld throughout the current dialogue. One encouraging sign is that the prime minister has said that he would be willing to hold a dialogue with the young people of the revolution. If he does so, he would be only the second prime minister in Egyptian history to speak in person to protesters. Prime minister Ahmed Maher did so in September 1944, when he went to Cairo University, alone and without bodyguards, to speak to the students who were protesting against his policies. One thing that I have found encouraging, despite the slow pace of reform, is that the prime minister is now fully willing to talk. In previous dialogues, students were too often only lectured at and their questions screened in advance. This is not the prime minister's intention today. He has made it clear that he wants to meet the young people in order to "narrow the scope of differences" and get closer to them. This is the beginning of a new era. Barriers that were once thought to be insurmountable are falling. Only a few days ago, the Muslim Brotherhood was barred from political life, at least officially. Now the vice-president is talking to the group's leaders, even as the Brotherhood itself still has a lot of work to do. For one thing, the Brotherhood cannot continue to mix religion with politics. It too needs to embrace the new spirit that is present in the country, and it needs to become part of the progress that is taking place. It is time that it separated political activity from religious preaching. It is also time for the government to allow political parties to form freely. In the future, there will be a need for revised rules and regulations governing party activities, but in the meantime the formation of new parties can no longer be stifled. We need to restore political health to our society. We need to balance the interests of various trends and currents. Our young people need to bring their energy to the political scene and to help rejuvenate the political parties. A new spirit is being born, and we need to keep it alive. Our officials need to keep up with the public, to restore their trust, to match their initiative, and to endorse their demands for genuine reforms. We need to start a credible national dialogue leading to lasting freedom and democracy. * The writer is a political expert.
