Did the revolution really fulfill its demands?
- While people are now busy talking about the constitution , forming political parties , gathering information about each to join one , cleaning streets , painting pavements and expressing their fears towards islamists , we tend to ignore answering the question : did really the revolution met its demands? Did the revolution ended or not? And If it ended, did it succeed?
Before answering this Question, Let’s remember what were the demands?
The demands of course varied between different groups, but those were the common demands:
1) President Mobarak should leave office and getting the system down
2) Emergency / marital law should be suspended
3) Magls Elsha’ab and Magls elShoura should be dissolved
4) Releasing all the political detainees and prisoners of jan25 revolution
5) A new constitution
6) Political parties should be launched via announcements only
7) The minimum wage should be 1200 L.E
8) The officials who were accused of corruption and officials who were directly involved in the violence incidents during protests should be put on trial
9) The freedom of press and speech
So, I’m analyzing each demand separately:
1) PEOPLE DEMAND THE SYSTEM DOWN
-This was the most famous chant in tahrir during jan/feb protests … All who were there chanted it and agreed upon it as a prior and as the most important demand but what really wasn’t agreed upon was “the definition of the system”
- And here differences emerged on the surface : some people referred to “the president” as the system and they claimed that there most important demand was fulfilled and that protest should stop
- Others claimed that the president is only “the head” of the system and that the body and the tail of the system is still there
- What was clear is that no one was sure about the definition of the system was it the president only? Was it the president and the cabinet? Does the system involve the head of every institution in Egypt? Does the system include the national companies and governmental agencies and universities? No one was sure and Each and every one has a different claim and most probably a different point of view
- The best Explanation I’ve heard was “the system which was operating for 30 years is very deep… the system had en rooted till it became the state itself ... so demanding the system down will have the same consequences of having the state down .. all we need is patience and consciousness”
- THE RESULT: So, by far, we can have POVs claiming that this demand hasn’t been fulfilled yet as the revolution didn’t take some “leftovers of the regime” down!
2) The emergency law!
- Unfortunately I was really surprised when I talked to people who knew nothing about this law and when I told them about it, they thought that it’s very normal for the state security to intervene this way! And they gave the army the excuse for not suspending this law till now and that’s a very important point that I would like to refer to it later
- THE RESULT : This demand hasn’t been fulfilled
3) Magls elsha’ad and Magls el SHoura had been dissolved
4) The political prisoners
The ones before 11 February have been released but till now the army is arresting activists and bloggers!
5) A new constitution:
After all the Yes/NO incidents that took place and the big fat YES , I have to say that the constitutional amendments referendum shouldn’t have taken place from the first place .. needless to say that the revolution legitimacy have taken this constitution down and the fact that the legal legitimacy took it down also the moment M handed his powers to the army , I can’t understand what kind of game is the army trying to implement and what annoy me is the fact that we have an “ugly” constitutional declaration with terms that we haven’t voted for
- THE RESULT: this demand hasn’t been fulfilled
6) The minimum wage!
I believe this is the most important point now …
Most of the observers believe that the revolution started by the middle class and some other classes joined later.. Yet we can’t deny how important their role was
If you go back in time, you’ll find out how workers in sensitive institutions of the country like Suez Canal for example have threatened to stop working in case Mobarak didn’t step down.
Many of the protesters whom I met in Tahrir wasn’t there for “Liberty”, “Freedom” or even for fair elections, but they were there because they suffered from poverty and ignorance.. all they needed out of the revolution is a better economic situation.
Now, what did the revolution and the middle class offer to the lower classes?
a) The minimum wage demand is not even fulfilled and the majority of these classes can’t see but the negative outputs of the revolution summarized in the lost security and the drop in wages
b) Most of the workers who tried to protest for their demands faced the new demonstration law and faced the fact they are being called as “ part of the old regime” and part of the “counter-revolution”
- THE RESULT: this demand hasn’t been fulfilled
7) The officials!
- THE RESULT: freezing the assets and bank accounts has nothing to do with the trial people demands!
8) Free press
I don’t think that we have a free press yet.. Though you can now talk about Mobarak and the whole gang anywhere else and you can criticize some ministers... Yet the army remains untouchable and if you criticize you face what Mikael Sanad is facing: a military court!!
- THE RESULT: ZERO!!
In a nutshell, I can still see that we only achieved one or two of the main demands.. The other demands haven’t been fulfilled which means that the revolution didn’t end.
I’m not pessimistic about the whole thing.. If you read history, you’ll realize that revolution may last for years and years and not only few months! Mobarak system was enrooted in the country and I believe it needs more than “18 days” to step down … what we need to realize that we should know that the demands are not fully fulfilled and we should work on that thoroughly …
The next posts I’ll be talking in details about how to focus efforts on achieving the demands.
