To keep alive the aspirations of 25 January 2011, revolutionary forces have to reclaim their revolutionary legitimacy, writes Eman Ragab* My attention was caught by a recent commentary on Egypt by Thomas Friedman in which he argues, "Egypt has not had a revolution yet. It's had an uprising." I recall the sensitivities that were aroused and the accusations that were hurled at those who voiced such an idea in the immediate aftermath of Mubarak's departure last year. To describe the revolutionaries' great achievement as a mere "uprising" was to do them a grave injustice. Apparently observers abroad may be better able to explain developments in Egypt and to assess the extent of change that has actually occurred. Because Egyptians were immediately involved in and, indeed, the prime movers of the events that began to unfold in January 2011, they were given to exaggerate and to describe what happened as a revolution even as the revolution was being hijacked. To a large extent this may be due to a certain lack of awareness among the revolutionary forces that spearheaded the revolution and sustained its impetus and among the people who acted to support these forces. All failed to appreciate the fact that a revolution is an ongoing process and that its continuity is contingent upon its continued legitimacy as an idea supported by the people. The revolution did not end with the departure of Mubarak, the crumbling influence of his cronies, and the handover of power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). The assertion that the revolution has been hijacked is not so much an accusation as it is a realistic depiction of the balance of powers of the various forces that played a major part in the revolution. While revolutionary forces and opinion pundits were focussed on the "remnants of the regime" and the "counter-revolution", the revolution was being hijacked from within. In fact, you could say it was hijacked twice. Once was by the military establishment that sided with the revolutionary movement as of January and turned it into an uprising that succeeded in toppling the head of the regime. The second time was by the Islamist forces who won the majority in the recent parliamentary elections and who seem bent on reproducing, in one form or another, the dominant-party system. Perhaps the revolutionary forces will have to recapture the revolution in order to ensure that they are the primary movers of change and the ones who set the agenda. In theory, two conditions would have to be met in order for this to become possible. First, the revolutionaries would have to come to power in order to be in a position to put the demands of the revolution into effect. Second, the revolutionary impetus must be sustained to ensure that those in power remain committed to implementing the demands of the revolution. Practically speaking, the first condition has not been realised. The revolutionaries are not the ones in charge of the country today. The four governments that have been formed since Mubarak stepped down did not contain a single representative of the revolutionary forces, whether in the narrow sense of the people that set the revolution into motion, such as the 6 April Movement, or even in the broader sense of the revolutionary generation (the under 35 age group) that formed a major component of the revolutionary drive that brought Mubarak down. At the same time, the recently elected People's Assembly does not have a balanced representation of youth, and revolutionary youth in particular. The winners in these elections were the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis and the Wafd Party, none of which were the architects of the revolution or mainstays of its impetus. Recall that before the "Battle of the Camel", the Muslim Brotherhood entered into negotiations with Omar Suleiman in order to obtain political gains in exchange for withdrawing its members from Tahrir Square. This situation essentially reflects the distortion in the composition of political parties, whether Islamist or non-Islamist ones, or the pre-25 January or post-25 January ones. None have been revolutionised in the sense of opening their doors to the effective participation and empowerment of revolutionary youth and the active promotion of their views and demands. If the second condition is to be achieved, the revolutionary forces must be able to sustain hope and their activism in the street must sustain a certain "legitimacy". Unfortunately, for several many months revolutionary forces have been the target of a systematic smear campaign. They have been variously accused of obtaining foreign financing and of trying to drive a wedge between the people and the army. More recently, the campaign has begun to strike out at the concept of the revolution itself, painting it as an event that began on 25 January and ended on 11 February 2011, and certainly not as a process that should have continued to January 2012. It is in this context that we should understand the rhetoric of the "celebration" of the revolution and its "victories" and the warnings against a repetition of "the events of January 2011", and of a "conspiracy" that is being hatched for 25 January 2012. Much of what Egypt is experiencing today is the result of how the situation has been handled since Mubarak stepped down. This process has been characterised by two chief features, the first being the attitude of the military establishment from the outset. True, the military played a key role in forcing Mubarak to give up power. However, the fact that the military, itself, took over power has worked to hamper change. On the one hand, the military by its very nature is an establishment that is inclined to stability. On the other, Egyptians are overly sensitive to criticism aimed at the army, to which testify the relatively low turnouts to the mass demonstrations that rallied to the demand that SCAF step down. This trend is an indicator of the declining appeal of revolutionary activism to the Egyptian people. Because of its inclination to stability, the military sought to promote change through the existing legislative and constitutional structures of the old regime. The revolutionary approach of overthrowing old laws and systems and introducing new revolutionary ones runs against the military establishment's grain. As a result, after being the "protector" of the revolution and the "interim" authority to which Mubarak surrendered power, this establishment became the "executor" of revolutionary demands. The second major characteristic of this phase has been a lack of vision founded upon a consensus among all revolutionary forces that still advocate continuing the revolution until it attains its objectives. These forces not only include the 6 April Movement, the Revolution Youth Coalition, the National Association for Change and other such movements, but also the newly formed parties that succeeded in winning some seats in the People's Assembly and that have generally bowed to the idea of gradual institutionalised change. Perhaps Tunisia, by contrast, offers an example of the largely successful forging of a broad revolutionary consensus. Sustaining the revolutionary impetus is vital to the completion of the process of change in Egypt. But this requires reviving the notion of the "legitimate revolution" that prevailed during the 18 days that led to the overthrow of Mubarak. Towards this end, under the current situation, the revolutionary forces should be regarded as a front whose purpose is to pressure, monitor and check those in power. The revolutionary legitimacy of this front would not necessary detract from the legitimacy of those in power, whether their legitimacy is based on a mandate, as is the case of SCAF, or on the ballot box, as is the case of the recently elected People's Assembly. * The writer is a researcher at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
