The Revolution First - A dispatch from Tahrir
Ahaab Mohammad has something to say. A pharmacist from Cairo, he interrupts the conversation that I’ve just begun with a friend from the U.S. to explain the importance of today’s protest in Tahrir Square, how vital it is for achieving the unfulfilled demands of the Egyptian uprising.
I’m told this is a common, albeit recent, phenomenon. The frustrated political critiques and quotidian complaints that have been bottled up for thirty years of Mubarak rule, now come forth freely, especially in the liberated space of Tahrir Square.
“Our revolution was about changing the regime,” says my long-lost interlocutor. “We will not end our revolution until the regime — the whole regime — is gone. The regime is made up of institutions, not individuals.”
But not even the individuals are gone, as the banner strung up above are heads indicates. It reads in black Arabic script: “The People Demand the Prosecution of Mubarak” — a reminder that not even the despised former ruler has been brought before a court, nearly five months to the day since his resignation. And the institutions, particularly the military, remain in place.
That, everyone knows. Which is why Tahrir has been reoccupied.
The pace of change in Egypt has been too slow. Too few regime officials have been brought before the court and convicted of their crimes, whether on charges of corruption or for the killing of protesters. It is a failure made all the more frustrating because striking workers and revolutionary cadre continue to be brought before secret military tribunals and given swift sentences.
“The revolution first” is today’s demand and Ahaab Mohammed as well as thousands upon thousands of others are here to set the revolution back on track.
The question that lingers after this show of popular support for the uprising, though, is how.
Another Tahrir protester answered this question very simply, very bluntly. We need, he began, justice for the families of the martyrs (the relatives of the over 800 protesters killed during the uprising). Then, he continued, we execute two, maybe three, of the former regime officials. And then we build a new system.
Such is revolutionary justice in Egypt. He is not alone, for sure. Chants demanding the execution of the former interior minister went up during a Tahrir protest last week.
But what is the new system? What is the strategy for implementing it? What structure is in place to even develop one?
“If today’s protest doesn’t work,” an Egyptian novelist named Mona tells me, while seated in a cafe just off Tahrir Square, “I think we need a general strike. The military and the former regime figures are protecting their own interests; they are protecting themselves and not implementing the demands of the revolution.”
What’s to be done, I ask. What, in other words, is the method for achieving the aspirations of the revolution?
“We have to continue; we cannot go back. The situation is not like it was before January 25th. The Egyptian people are not going to go back to the way it was before. Before we were almost dead. On the 25th of January we said enough.”
Mona wants a new system, too. She supports the establishment of a minimum, as well as a maximum, wage. “There are people who make three hundred Egyptian Pounds a month (about $50) or less and other people who make twenty million Egyptian Pounds a month. There are people living in many different villas around Cairo, while others are living in shanties. We need to make sure that peoples’ basic needs are covered. We will have classes; there will be rich; there will be poor; there will be a middle class. But people should have their basic needs taken care of.”
Mona offers an anecdote from her morning commute to Tahrir as a way of showing that the change in political consciousness which has been brought about in Egypt cannot be undone and has taken on a life of its own.
She boarded a minibus, she relates. The driver was playing a c.d. of revolutionary songs, no one famous, just the voice of an anonymous Egyptian youth — could be anyone’s son, cousin, nephew, or neighbor. The song celebrated the fall of Mubarak. A bearded passenger in the back demanded the driver change the music — its Friday after all. The driver shot back that if his disgruntled passenger didn’t like the voice of revolution, he should put on some earphones, that Egyptians were ruled by Mubarak for thirty years, and that they were not going to be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood anytime soon.
Egypt’s not the same. But that was January’s story. The question now is: what will it become? Many want a revolutionary plan. Some seek political elites that reflect their demands. No one — at least here in Tahrir — supports prolonged rule by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
A revolutionary plan that has captured a broad consensus, though, is yet to emerge. Neither has a charismatic liberal, secular politician that trade unions, “the youth”, or middle class might get behind. The dominant political parties elicit reluctant support, if not complete disdain. Workers parties, revolutionary parties remain marginal and unlikely to have any electoral impact.
As the man who said a few executions would move things along told me, the people are back in the streets, though. They’re talking, once again, about the demands of the revolution. And that might be exactly what is needed at this confusing, difficult time in Egypt’s evolving revolutionary moment, in order to put things back on track.
But this optimism, shared by all I spoke with, was readily countered by the realization that the military and the regime elements that have robbed Egyptians for decades remain in place and they will not move without being pushed.
