CAIRO - “God is great.” This was the comment of an old woman, who was watching some workers removing a larger than life poster of former President Hosni Mubarak, toppled by mass protests more than a month ago, outside the building where The Egyptian Gazette is located. The workers replaced it with another poster of the same size for the young people who were killed in the January 25 revolution. Another young man gazed at the new poster, which included a photo of an Army general saluting the dead victims in a televised speech, and shouted: “Here are the heroes.” Dozens of passersby shared his sentiment. “No-one imagined that Mubarak would be ousted. No-one imagined that his banners and statues would be removed in this insulting way,” said 71-year-old Leila Salama, a pensioner. The long-serving Mubarak stepped down on February 11 in response to 18 days of mass protests across the nation, spearheaded by youth activists, who incited people to join them in what was then described as a ‘white revolution'. Around 400 were killed in the events. “Yes. Mubarak has gone. But it will take Egypt some time to remove the traces of his influence. The country has a long way to go in order to escape from his shadow,” added Mrs Salama. Her comment and the removal of the Mubarak posters have been described by Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University, as a new Egyptian era. “Egypt has taken the first step towards de-Mubarakisation. It will take at least two years to overcome the effects of thirty years under Mubarak,” he says. Nafaa adds, however, that, only when Egyptians get rid of the vestiges of Mubarak, “can we say that the revolution has been a success”. Egyptians did not wait for Nafaa's political analysis to start the de-Mubarakisation process. While a group of lawyers have filed lawsuits to have Mubarak's name removed from textbooks, a headmaster in the ex-leader's hometown has removed his statue from the school playground. After Mubarak's fall, revolutionaries staged an open-ended strike in Al Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the protests, calling for Ahmed Shafiq, the then Prime Minister, to step down, simply because he was appointed by Mubarak. Shafiq was replaced on March 3. A group of young men also changed the name of the bustling Mubarak Tube Station at Ramses to ‘The Martyrs', writing the new name by hand on all signs on the platforms, without consulting the concerned authorities. “We have changed this station's name with the power of revolutionary legitimacy. This is a way of showing our loyalty to the martyrs and a sign of our despising and our hatred for Mubarak, whose era was a time of suffering for Egyptians,” says Jehan Ibrahim, a co-ordinator of the Popular Democratic Front Movement, a youth group. Jehan adds that, in the long run, it will take co-operation to achieve de-Mubarakisation. “It will take time to get rid of authoritarianism, corruption, nepotism, social injustice, lack of freedom and police torture. It is not a matter of name change,” Jehan told The Gazette. Officially speaking, Mubarak's portrait was removed from most State institutions after three employees replaced it in the Cabinet headquarters three weeks ago with the word ‘Allah' in a frame. This was followed by Giza Governorate and other governmental agencies. “We have clear instructions to remove Mubarak's portrait until a new president is elected,” a key official in Qaliubia Governorate, north of Cairo, told this newspaper, adding that they have not been ordered to replace the portrait with ‘something religious'. Abdullah el-Ashaal, a former assistant foreign minister, hails the removal of Mubarak's photo as ushering in a new era, but he is critical of the fact that, in the Cabinet headquarters, it's been replaced by something religious. “This could give the impression that the revolution had some Islamist goals and this is untrue,” says el-Ashaal, a potential presidential candidate, adding that the effect of three decades of Mubarak's rule cannot just be ‘unplugged'. “It will take time to get the results we want. But anyway, renaming establishments carrying the former President's name is a good start.” Biased officials used to name streets, bridges, academies, libraries, housing projects, reading initiatives and schools after Mubarak and his wife Suzanne, leading Farouq, a 19-year-old officer cadet at the Mubarak Police Academy, to ask: “Will our academy be renamed after Amr Moussa or Mohamed ElBaradei?” Farouq was trying to guess who might be Egypt's new President.
