The coming together of Egypt's youth, army and masses brought about the 25 January Revolution, but this partnership may now be unravelling, writes Ahmed El-Tonsi* The Egyptian Revolution is passing through a critical phase. Some have claimed that the Revolution has been aborted, and that there should be a new revolution that can re-establish its role in the aftermath of the ousting of former president Hosni Mubarak. Others have been inviting the revolutionaries to join the recently formed political parties in order to achieve the ultimate objectives of the Revolution, change, liberty and social justice. On the other hand, a number of people have been harshly criticising the Revolution, ascribing the current state of insecurity and economic stagnation to the Revolution and its youthful leaders. It can certainly be said that the partnership between the three protagonists of the Revolution, namely the youth, the army and the masses, is on the verge of becoming broken, a serious development that has had a destabilising effect on the Revolution, if not on the state of Egypt itself. Delinking the three pillars would negatively impact on their individual roles and would redefine each partner's contribution to the Revolution and consequently to the evolution of the new Egypt. For instance, if the army were to move away from the masses and its real vanguard, the youth, then its vital contribution to the success of the Revolution would be more or less that of a military takeover, ousting a decaying and corrupt regime and transferring power to aspirant power seekers and civilian politicians. This has not been the case with the army, which has been an integral partner to the Revolution. Moreover, the reduction of the army's patriotic role to that of an agent to change the government would not be fair either to Egypt or to the vast majority of its people. These people were the sole motive behind the army's decision to join and support the Revolution, and in return the masses have entrusted the army with the duty of fulfilling their legitimate demands. Similarly, if the youth were to move away from the masses, the latter would be converted into merely leaderless factions that would direct their grievances, though sometimes legitimate, against the state, society, and ultimately the Revolution itself. Such leaderless masses would then be exploited by other political forces that would move to fill the gap and accomplish their own objectives, which may not align with those the masses demand. History tells us that the masses do not usually revolt, but that they can be mobilised. The youth have performed this vital role of directing the Egyptian masses' energies towards accomplishing the Revolution's objectives. Accordingly, the Revolution will lose its vanguard, momentum and stamina if the youth are separated from the masses. Even more devastating would be the exclusion of one of the most patriotic generations in Egypt's modern history from playing its proper role. On the other hand, the current weak link, which barely exists, between the revolutionaries and the army, if it continues will eventually end up with the isolation of the revolutionaries from the decision-making process. In other words, the three partners will each lose much from their current disarray. No less important is Egypt's dream of political liberalisation and economic development that will change into a nightmare. The three partners have different orientations, and each has to reassess its performance during the transitional period. First, there is the army, which has said that it intends to manage, but not to rule, the state. Similarly, the army has described the current government as a "caretaker" one. Both descriptions look shy for no reason and apologetic for no offence. The Italian political thinker Machiavelli once said that you cannot govern innocently, and it is mandatory that both institutions rule the state, each in its domain, with no excuse about not fully performing their prerogatives. A transitional period is not a dormant phase in the genealogy of any revolution. Rather, it is a phase of the intense work of eliminating the old regime and laying the foundations of a new one. Moreover, a transitional phase is part of the revolution, not a reform of the ousted regime. In other words, the transitional phase of any revolution is not an attempt to restore a modified form of the status quo ante, as the latter was the reason for the revolution in the first place, meaning that it must be eliminated, not rectified. The revolution is a negation, or antithesis, of the existing, decaying reality that led to its occurrence. Therefore, the transition should be governed by those who made the Revolution, including the crucial partner of the army. The army is destined to continue with the accomplishment of the rest of the Revolution, or the people's objectives, not just because of its indispensable role in ousting the former Mubarak regime. The army was clear in its early communiqués that it would support the legitimate demands of the people. Moreover, it was in full harmony with the revolutionaries, acknowledging their role, saluting their martyrs, and even endorsing their slogans and objectives. However, gradually the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has distanced itself from the revolutionaries and refrained from conducting a constructive dialogue that could have saved the nation many of the ongoing uncertainties and mishaps. Issues like the municipalities, the public nature of trials, the ministerial reshuffle, the electoral laws, and even the constitutional declaration, are typical examples of SCAF decisions that provoked much unnecessary debate. Some of the Friday demonstrations could have been avoided as a result, while directing the precious energies of the revolutionaries towards achieving more strategic objectives and sparing the political scene further divisions and polarisation. Had the SCAF continued its dialogue with the revolutionaries, they would not have resorted to their Friday demonstrations. To avoid the discrepancies between the revolutionaries' ambitions and the SCAF's reserved attitudes, the latter should also have appointed a civilian presidential council that could have acted as a bridge between the two partners and thereby helped streamline the transitional phase. The SCAF has also been in too much of a hurry to execute its mission of transferring power to a civilian government, as if the objective of the military was to leave power as soon as possible. The SCAF has become process, rather than results, oriented. To be fair, such hasty attitudes have emanated from the deliberate blackmailing carried out by many groups across the political spectrum. This blackmailing rested on criticising the July 1952 Revolution, particularly its transitional period, which ended with the military staying in power for an indefinite time. Slogans, if not wolf cries, against the involvement of the army in politics have been deliberately raised and in many cases have been remarkably crude. Many of these moves, which emanated from different political forums inside Egypt, have given a sense of déjà vu to the transitional phase of the January Revolution. Such tactics of blackmailing have proven to be successful, however, and ultimately the SCAF has been accelerating its steps, if not strides, in the process of transferring power to civilians. However, the Egyptian army is not like many other armies in the developing countries in terms of its involvement in politics as a power arbiter. The history of the Egyptian army is the proof of this, and it has been confirmed by the SCAF's stating that the army has no intention of staying in power after the completion of its mission. It is important to mention that the SCAF has been subjected to intense pressure from many directions, both inside and outside Egypt, aiming at containing its vital role in safeguarding the state or at directing its moves towards achieving a given party's, organisation's or country's objectives. As such, the army's commitment to transferring power and the deliberately incendiary calls from some political trends and pressures from nearly everywhere have rendered the SCAF needlessly impatient when it comes to the date of the army's return to barracks. On the other hand, the SCAF has not been careful enough regarding its mission of ensuring the security of the country, and in fact it has not done much, save for approving financial resources, to save the collapsing security apparatus. Not unrelated has been the reliance of the SCAF on the current bureaucracy, most of it ineffectual and seriously corrupt, without any endeavours to start a purge campaign that could have acted as a role model for similar initiatives to be endorsed by the different government departments and agencies. The army is still the only functioning institution inside the state, and during the transitional phase the SCAF should have transferred at least its working spirit to some public institutions, such as those that serve citizens' daily lives. Instead, the SCAF has operated like a fire brigade in its dealing with the issues or crises that have not abated. Regarding the internal security of the society and the state, we should remember that the army is a deterring and not a law-enforcing force, and it cannot be anything other than that. Deterrence requires, first, that the other law- enforcing institutions exist, and second that they operate in a way that makes them fulfill their purported functions or duties. The SCAF has been too cautious in addressing the security issue, when it was the most urgent issue, and despite the fact that the army was the only institution that had the full confidence of the overwhelming majority of the Egyptian people. The revolutionaries, the vanguard of the Revolution, have shortcomings that have implications for the Revolution and its path. Failing to form a unified forum, the revolutionaries have made their mission predestined to encounter difficulties to come. For example, the revolutionaries have not appealed to the masses, their strategic partners, and those having a real stake in the Revolution, with new slogans that could have reflected their raised expectations in the aftermath of the days of January and February. Issues like a civil state and supra-constitutional principles are elitist ideas that do not appeal to the masses, at least for the time being. Simply, many of the latest Friday slogans do not constitute a priority for the vast majority of the masses that made the Revolution. In a country where 40 per cent of the population is below the poverty line and 68 per cent of its healthcare expenditure comes out of people's pockets, such slogans do not look like priorities. Within the same context of narrow demands, the revolutionaries have been frequently abused by some factions within the political elites in such a way as to curtail a rising or a competing political group. Besides, some of the demands have been low-hanging fruit that did not warrant inviting people to demonstrations. Since such a large section of the masses pursued its narrow parochial interests via the chaotic means of violent demonstrations, sit-ins or strikes, there should be no surprise about the rising wave of violence that has tainted some of the mass protests. The revolutionaries have not altered their favoured approach of Tahrir Square demonstrations on Fridays. However, these have become less and less visible, and in turn this has given rise to tensions and divisions among the revolutionaries, with some factions entering into serious friction with the SCAF on the eve of the anniversary of the July Revolution. Yet, there is no justification for the fragmentation of the revolutionaries' camp, as it is not based on a solid line of differentiation, be it ideological, closeness to the SCAF, party affiliation, or past history of common struggle. It is beyond anybody's perception to understand that we now have more than 200 movements dubbed as revolutionary, even if we accept all the lines of political differentiation or cleavage they imply. Obviously, the main line of division is personal relationship, which makes it difficult for many to reconcile their differences and redeem the unifying spirit of the January Revolution. This fragmentation has deprived the revolutionaries of part of their hard, and more seriously, of their soft power as the most influential political group. Another important issue is that the fragmentation of the revolutionaries has complicated their interactions with the other partners, as well as with the different political forces on the political scene. More serious still, the fragmentation of the revolutionary comrades has enabled the SCAF to dominate relatively unchallenged the whole political scene and to be appeased by certain aspirant politicians and parties, who have in turn added more fuel to the already highly volatile relationship between the SCAF and the revolutionaries. Even this situation of impending crisis has not convinced the revolutionaries to regroup and establish a solid body that could speak with one voice, such as in their initial cry of freedom, change and social justice that galvanised the masses and made the army join the Revolution. Instead, some of the revolutionaries have entered into friction with the SCAF on the eve of the anniversary of the July Revolution, and confrontation between the two partners has taken place. The communiqué of the SCAF in late July represented a new phase in the relationship between the revolutionaries and the army. Once more, it was another case of déjà vu, yet this time it was the army that made the first move. Apart from its stormy form, the communiqué was clear in its emphasis on the people's demands and the commitment of the army to meeting them within the framework of constitutional and legal legitimacy. In other words, the communiqué's identification of the constitution and the laws as the sole sources of the legitimacy of the army meant that it did not necessarily consider the Revolution itself to be a source of legitimacy. As a result, the Revolution was denied its right to be considered as a source of legitimacy, and similarly the Revolution's objectives became mere requests that the SCAF would endeavour to accomplish within the agreed-upon plan of March's referendum. As a result, the revolutionaries were reduced to becoming a part of the national fabric and not the presumed front line of the nation as a whole. The masses, the third and most important partner in the Revolution, are by nature impatient. As journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal has said, they are under the misconception that that the Revolution was accomplished in their name, and that it is time to reap the fruits. What has augmented this hasty misperception has been too much talk about the corruption and the fortunes belonging to the old regime figures, which signified that there was a national cake and it should have been better distributed. This was how things were understood in the case of the masses, which have been denied basic needs for decades while all forms of extravagance were prevalent among the elites. What looked bizarre was the pressure exerted by many political parties and groups in their pursuit of attaining power. Pressure was directed towards a quick transfer of power to a mysterious government made up mostly of a shaky coalition of aspirant ex-regime oppositional figures. At best, with the ongoing political fragmentation, the next civilian government will look like a typical French Fourth Republic government, adding more instability to an already highly unstable political scene. If the objective of the Revolution was fair elections, then in essence fair elections are the means to ensuring that the majority rules, giving rise to a stable political system that reflects the rational preferences of the majority. Elections cannot and should not be considered an end in themselves. Many of the political forces, though the term does not apply to many of them as they lack real presence in the political sphere, have started pushing many of the inexperienced revolutionaries first to join their structures and second to achieve their objective of delaying the holding of elections. The country's privately owned media have played a leading role in this direction, and it is not a surprise to find that the ownership of some TV channels and newspapers belongs to the partisans of certain political groups. In many cases, the masses, as well as their vanguard, have effectively been misled by many of the traditional forces that have been denied meaningful political participation for decades. The current state of political fluidity, which implies the quality of being likely to change, has attracted new forces that cannot be categorised as political ones at all. Some of these have been driven by the scarcity of real political leaders and well-articulated ideologies, with the salafis being in this category. They, in fact, have transcended the fluid state, passing directly from solid to the gaseous phase and being highly dispersed, yet only capable of exerting local and temporary impacts. Such fluidity has motivated many other outlawed anti-society elements within the masses to get what they think of as their share, and from here comes the rise of the thugs, who do not constitute a new phenomenon as they are part of the legacy of the ousted regime. However, the masses' deprivation still exists even as temptations are magnified and de novo thugs are daily secreted, if not recruited, by larger, organised crime organisations. The revolutionaries have not been power seekers, and when the regime collapsed they did not march to take a share of power in order to complete the mission of the Revolution. This fact should be seen from a positive perspective, reflecting the purity and innocence of the revolutionaries. We should nurture and empower this nascent generation with all its tremendous strengths, instead of abusing it as a Trojan horse. Regrettably, though, something like this has been the case in the case of the revolutionaries, where many parties, groups, media channels and even laymen have capitalised on their soft power in order to induce changes that they deem favourable for their own objectives and causes. In other words, the revolutionaries have been used in many instances as a scapegoat in partisan politics. Neither the revolutionaries nor the SCAF have any plan to assume power, while all the other forces have such ambitions. Both partners, the SCAF and the youth, should be aware that the so-called political forces are not the only representatives of the masses and that the vast majority of Egyptians are non- partisan. Even the Islamist trend with all its factions cannot claim that it is the representative of the nation. On the other hand, the revolutionaries and the army, yet only as true partners, are the sole representatives of the Revolution that they led and that many others seek to join for different reasons and for other objectives. It is against the future of the Egyptian state that the current conflict between the two partners militates, while its origins relate mostly to mutual misperceptions that have been manipulated to make the two partners take diametrically opposed stands. Many of the issues raised in the months following the ousting of Mubarak have been non-consensus building ones that have led to the escalation of polarisation in society, as well as in the political forces and between the two partners. The start was the issue of the constitution first, which caused much debate, particularly after some political forces requested that the SCAF lay down a group of supra-constitutional principles. Many of these requests were unrelated to the revolutionaries. Rather, they were among the demands of the other political forces that looked to electoral victory as their prime target. Electoral politics have become a burning issue, with different new laws that are still stirring controversy. It is important to mention that the SCAF has been careful about fulfilling such requests and addressing many such concerns. Presidential campaigning has been another dimension that has witnessed a similar abuse of the soft power of the revolutionaries. It would be easy and tempting to look back and come up with retrospective solutions as to what the SCAF and the revolutionaries should have done. Derailment is a very common event in any revolution, and in our trilateral one it seems inevitable. Those claiming déjà vu regarding the current role of the military are wrong in that it is more a case of du jamais vu, since the army's performance in the aftermath of the ousting of Mubarak was proof of its categorical rejection of staying in power after the completion of its mission. That said, the SCAF should remedy the ongoing dislocation among the Revolution's three partners. Meanwhile, we should continue to trust the only functioning institution in the country with the people's mandate of reestablishing the state. * The writer is a political analyst.
