In my opinion, one of the biggest faillures of the Egyptian attempt to transit from a military dictatorship into a modern democracy, is the fact that the change should have been pushed FROM WITHIN THE OLD REGIME. Same as happened in Spain. King Juan Carlos inherited legally all the powers from Franco and he used those powers to change the regime thru laws and legality.
Those taught to obbey the decissions of the Chief of the State and the rules of Franco’s “Movimiento Nacional” had to swallow their impulses as they could not rebel against the new leader chosen by their Chieftain, and… after all.. a process following the laws of the regime, even to reform it.
Spaniards voted their Constitution on Dec 6th 1978. Franco was dead by then since Nov 20th 1975.
3 Years of works, negotiations, trades, meetings, study and search for a common law FOR ALL.. as much as spaniards could do after a long history of disaster and lack of freedom. Even republican constitutions were more conflictive than this because they were built against “half Spain”, to follow the will of the other half.
In 1978 it was necessary to keep constantly in mind our million dead ppl in 1936-1939 and the Civil War aftermath of repression and famine… That tragedy was enough as to make everyone conscient of the need of making concessions to create a law FOR EVERYONE, even for those who would never have a chance to rule the nation.
Here the bad guys of the time, the proscrites were the Communist party. They had been the most active, organised and morally strong against Franco’s regime, and were also the most visible and noisy of the new parties spectrum after they were legalised. In the elections they obtained a terribly low number of votes, and since then, have been trying to survive. Just this huge crisis seems to revitalise them, in 2012-13… but they can’t expect to rule, and even this….. they are represented and have their space (…It could have been exactly the same for MB, if things ad not been done so fast and so wrong?)…
While this Constituent process was happening DISCRETELY and almost in secret,… with people from all parties involved… the government, made mostly of technocrats and former members of the old regime, worked in paving the way for constitutional freedom.
One can’t imagine a transition after decades of a regime into another, ousting, prosecuting, punishing… all those who made the country move during those decades.
May be ugly for many but… it’s merely logical!… Why no one payed any attention to this in Egypt? Why those coming to rule a transition didn’t notice that specially NOW, it’s necessary to admit all kind of voices to create a long lasting project, and not a one-sided country. There’s no such thing as a monolithic minded nation. Period.
Why still today, there’s no one advising them ALL abt examples to follow?… I’m not going to say we got a perfect system here but… we’ve got the longest period of peace, freedom and DEMOCRACY of our history. A history that also dates back millenia b.C….
Imperfect?…. sure,… as everything human is….
But… the best of all insufficient solutions?… ABSOLUTELY.
Now we were back in Tahrir (2.0).
Army seems to be on the way to take control by force. Obviously MB can’t rule and the opposition is too disgregated.
I see army guys behaving as army guys are supposed to do when they rule… wherever they rule.
Now… the huge doubt: will they push to change things in the right way?.. or will succumb to the pressure of violence and political chessgame?
And the also-huge doubt: Will Egyptians be able to keep patient and open enough as to let all this happen naturally with everyone taking part?
Honestly,…. i don’t know!… but I am doubting it.
Specially the second one.
In some ways, I’m grateful to Stalinists. They’re experts at making bile concisely palatable to the middle-class; Seamus Milne serves the purpose very well in the recent commentary on Egypt:
But the reality is, however incompetent Morsi’s administration, many key levers of power – from the judiciary and police to the military and media – are effectively still in the hands of the old regime elites. They openly regard the Muslim Brotherhood as illegitimate interlopers, whose leaders should be returned to prison as soon as possible.
Yet these are the people now in alliance with opposition forces who genuinely want to see Egypt’s revolution brought at least to a democratic conclusion. If Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are forced from office, it’s hard to see such people breaking with neoliberal orthodoxy or asserting national independence, as most Egyptians want. Instead, the likelihood is that the Islamists, also with mass…
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Al-Must'arib (the vocational Mossarab) 