In sitting at the Presidential desk in the very same office once used by the now jailed former president, Egypt's President-elect has turned over a new page in the country's history. The significance of his victory cannot be underestimated. In taking office as President, Dr Mohammed Morsi has changed Egypt's future forever. Jailed twice himself for a brief time during the first days of last year's revolution, it seemed inconceivable then that the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood would so soon be running the country. For decades, all the machinery of the state had been used to keep them out. They had been outlawed as a political party, the constitution had famously been re-written to prevent them fielding a candidate for president, making it possible only for the former president's son to have any chance of winning. The Muslim Brotherhood's members were often arrested and tortured. Election results were repeatedly rigged to prevent them taking their place in the puppet parliament. In fact, there were many Egyptians who still could not believe that Morsi would be allowed to win. They assumed that, like so many elections before, the results would be fixed. When a delay in declaring the result was announced last week it seemed that history was going to repeat itself and the people's will would once more be thwarted. Having been telling everyone the details of the poll results for a week, the Muslim Brotherhood were still not sure that the facts would be allowed to be known. There was still the lingering fear of electoral fraud. So, whether they supported him or not, many Egyptians heaved a collective sigh of relief when the final result was announced, knowing at last that they were not to see the return of the old regime and the accompanying strife that could have come with it. For sure, those protesting in Tahrir Square and all over Egypt would not have sat idly by if they suspected foul play. Now that the results are in, that is not to say that everyone is happy. Far from it. Even the president's closest supporters cannot be pleased with the current state of affairs. In the shenanigans that preceded the poll, we have already seen how the lower house of parliament was dissolved and its powers assumed by the ruling military. We saw the Constitution tampered with to limit the powers of the incoming president, making him in many ways little more than a ceremonial head of state. The new president, we learned, would not be able to declare war, nor have any say over the nation's budget, nor be able to veto any legislation introduced by the military. We even heard spokesmen for the military saying that the new president's term of office would only be short, since new elections would have to take place after they had re-written the Constitution. All of this was done within days of the election, as though the military saw the writing on the wall and needed to make their changes quickly, since their own man was not going to win. So with no parliament, no Constitution, no clear idea of what the president's powers are, and a society and an economy that are both on their knees, the challenges ahead are enormous. It seems that a showdown between the President's Office and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will not be too long in coming, defining quite who is in control and who will shape Egypt's future. Or maybe, some analysts suggest, all this has been part of the plan. They would have us believe that, given the limited powers of the incoming president, he is destined to fail and so will be rejected by the electors when the next election takes place fairly soon, being replaced by the “strong man" preferred by the army. The Muslim Brotherhood will have been given their chance and been found wanting. It will be time, instead, to return to what Egyptians know. Whilst this so-called plan is not inconceivable, it leaves out one important part of the equation, which is that everything has changed. Nothing will ever be like it was before, even if a strong man is elected President. There may be many in the business world that wish things were like they used to be. There may be vested interests that benefited from the fraud and the crimes of previous decades. There may, indeed, be many waiting in the wings to come back and rule the country as though it were their private possession. But that is not going to happen. After eighteen months of chaos and uncertainty, we have seen the first tangible fruit of last year's revolution. Tangible, that is, in the lives of ordinary Egyptians. Most Egyptians had seen no real change for the better since the January 25 Revolution. In fact, all they had seen was the country slowly getting worse and worse. None of them had any experience of what has been going on, for example, in Egypt's universities for the last year, where leadership has been taken out of the hands of party favourites and replaced by men and women elected from amongst their peers. None of them have witnessed at first hand either the sweeping changes that have been taking place in the junior ranks of the police force, where younger, talented and honest young officers have been promoted to positions of responsibility, or in the judiciary where many judges have been replaced. A revolution means a complete turning upside down of the way things are. It means a sweeping away of all that is bad. This has not happened in Egypt, leaving many to question whether what happened last year was really a revolution at all. But to ignore the gains would be to ignore reality. However, for most Egyptians their main concern is security and the food they eat. And for them, the revolution brought no improvements. In fact, things have undeniably got worse and worse. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that if Dr Morsi had not been elected President of Egypt we may have witnessed the end of the revolution. But the extraordinary thing is that he did win and he now is the president. That fact alone is extraordinary. The very fact that he now sits in the office of the president is, indeed, a reversal of the old order. Things have been turned upside down. Those who were once in prison now hold the keys to the prison. And in an ironic turn of events, those who once used to oppress and oppose them now have to do as they are told! We can only hope that now that the real criminals are no longer in charge of the country, they have been replaced by honest men. Inshallah, whatever mistakes lie ahead, Egypt can only benefit by being ruled by honest men. British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, is a lecturer at Al-Azhar University . The author of eight books about Islam, he divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com.
