The other possibility is that the young revolutionaries behind January 25 and now June 30 decide that with tens of millions of people behind them (a very different situation than existed after the January 25 revolution, in which far fewer people actively took part), they can afford to go for the proverbial knock-out blow. Indeed, with the economy in tatters and the country on the precipice of unprecedented civil strife, the military is potentially in a far weaker position now than it was after Mubarak’s departure.
Αναδημοσίευουμε τμήματα από άρθρο που εμφανίστηκε στο Al Jazeera σχετικά με τη συγκυρία στην Αίγυπτο. Ο συγγραφέας ανήκει προφανώς στο “δημοκρατικό” στρατόπεδο, και όπως κάθε ένας που ανήκει σ’αυτό έχει ως ορίζοντα του, αναγκαστικά την κατάληψη του κράτους (ανεξάρτητα αν το λέει ή όχι, και αυτός το λέει). Θέτει όμως ορισμένα από τα βασικά ζητήματα της συγκυρίας με ενδιαφέροντα τρόπο (η έμφαση σε ορισμένα σημεία δική μας):
After 887 days of protests, tear gas, tanks, camels, horses, tent cities, marches, birdshot, live ammunition, ultras, great music, torture, rape, disappointments, spears, knives, Facebook campaigns, undercover thugs, military detentions, men with scimitars, show trials, elections, referendums, annulments, arson, police brutality, negotiations, machinations, committees, strikes, street battles, foreign bailouts, extreme theatre, revolutionary graffiti, television drama, Leninist study circles, and Salafi sit-ins, Egypt’s young revolutionaries have managed to do the near impossible: force the “nizzam” – the system – to restart a deeply flawed transition process in a manner which, at least at the surface, puts civilians in charge of a fraught transition process that was likely doomed the first time around the moment SCAF took control.
[…]
The last two and a half years have largely flowed more or less as one might have imagined once SCAF assumed control of the transition. The military’s broad control of Egyptian politics for half a century, it’s huge role in the economy – including in the transition to a neoliberal order that was supposed to weaken the grip of the old elites but broadly strengthened it, its highly authoritarian and patriarchal nature, and its guaranteed support from its major Western and Arab sponsors, all left it with little incentive or even ability to move the country along a path that would actually produce freedom, dignity, social justice, and an overall better life for most Egyptians.
The problem was, and remains, that the only way for the revolution to achieve its core goals would be literally to create a new state – a new set of power relations and institutions through which they flow that would profoundly redistribute social, economic and political power throughout Egyptian society. But to do this they would have to take on, and defeat, the military and the order it represented. As long as the military controls the political and economic process in Egypt, the vast majority of Egyptians will live well below their economic and political potential.
The honeymoon between the military and the revolutionaries was over not long after it began, as the military launched waves of assaults on and even massacres of demonstrators and activists, detaining thousands, most without civilian trials, even as the deep state began to shore up its political footing through the emerging constitutional, legislative and electoral process. In the summer and fall of 2011, spring and fall of 2012, revolutionary forces returned to the streets and battled the military, and ultimately the Brotherhood-regime, not with any hope of finishing the revolution, but to ensure it wasn’t completely lost.
