CELEBRATING the July 23 Revolution today prompts one to make a comparison between it and that of January 25. Some believe that there are lots of similarities between the two events, despite being separated by six decades. The 1952 revolution was initiated by a group of Armed Forces officers, who were members of the Free Officers Movement, that was formed in Egypt following 1948 war in Palestine. The aim was to unseat the then King Farouq and end long years of corruption and injustice. For these reasons, the people rushed to back their army in 1952 and turned it from a mere military coup to a real revolution. In other words, the people protected the armed forces from the charge of coming to rule via a coup d'état. In January 2011, meanwhile, the people, mainly a group of well educated youth, launched a protest against the security state with its tyrannical and corrupt image. Their motto was bread, liberty and social justice, which resembled the aims of the 1952 revolution. As opposed to protecting the revolution, the army curbed its success by different means. Taking over rule from the toppled president, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) drove the country into fruitless political dispute, ending in the emergence and domination of the Islamist powers some of them never played a role in the revolution to the cost of the real revolutionary powers. The military council continued to delay in taking the appropriate measures to uproot the corrupt regime from the different governmental departments. After more than a year and half of the transitional period, people woke up to the fact that they only removed the President from his Palace leaving his men and women to continue governing the country. This laxity in getting rid of Mubarak's people prompted them to direct a brutal counter-revolution using funds, thugs and some members of the media to scare the public away from the revolution. It ended with some 12 million people voting for Mubarak's final prime minister Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shafiq in the Presidential run-off. July 23 Revolution managed to fulfil part of its goals in terms of ensuring social justice for small farmers and industrial workers, rebuilding the country's economy and restoring the national pride of Egypt and the Arab world. However, the second president of Egypt Gamal Abdel-Nasser intended to help other Arab and African countries to enjoy the same liberty and backed revolution to end the tyrannical and foreign rule of many of these countries, which turned him from a national into a regional hero. This caused world powers to conspire against him by dragging him into the1967 war to suffer defeat on hands of Israel. This was the beginning of the end of July revolution's glory as Egypt and the whole Arab nation sank in an arms race to lead a war of dignity against the Zionist enemy. Today, meanwhile, the defeat of the January 25 Revolution has prompted some Egyptian opportunists think it is time to launch the Islamist Caliphate in the Arab region with Egypt as its centre, although the military could not concede to a civil ruler after six decades of rule in Egypt. The result is civil revolutionary powers failing to achieve rule or even having a good influential representation in the Constituent Assembly to draw up a balanced constitution expressing goals and nature of the revolution and its dream of progress. Some optimistic analysts continue hoping that this set back is a mere misstep that always face revolutions at the beginning after which it would resume its drive for fulfilling its goals. However, there is an ongoing conflict between the elected president, SCAF and the Judiciary. What is scaring is that by the time all these powers realise the importance of settling their dispute peacefully, revolutionaries would despair at going on with their struggle to consolidate the success of their revolution and society would drop its dream of building the country on a modern developed basis. One fears that after passage of some years in this way, we would have nothing left of January 25 Revolution but the mere public holiday that people get on that day in celebrating a great event, which lasted for no more than 18 days and did not subsequently reflect on our life.
