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03 February 2011 By Saeed Qureshi
The Western press has been describing the Egyptian
situation as discontent and unrest. It is a blatant
mischaracterization of a cataclysm that heralds a
revolution a la the
French Revolution
of 1789. If we can use the mild superlatives to sketch
the enormity of this scenario, we can employ such
terms as uprising, tumult, revolt, and a rebellion.
This uprising is mounted against a discredited and
odious system spawned by a civilian tyrant still
impervious to the intensity of the conflagration that
has engulfed the entire length and breadth of
Egypt; between the lower and the
Upper Egypt.
Egyptians tend to be revolutionaries as the history of
this country bears out. It was some three thousand
years ago that driven by hunger, the Egyptians rose in
revolt against a powerful
Pharaoh.
They ransacked his palace, forced the elite and the
privileged members of the then society to flee. They
looted the food grain stocks and treasury. The time
line between that revolt and the ongoing revolution
against
Hosni Mubarak,
a kind of reincarnated Pharaoh, disappears because of
the similarity of the outrage.
Hosni Mubarak, by profession is a journalist and a
legatee of the
Anwar Sadat's
legacy of reconciliation with
Israel and
subservience to their common mentor, the
United States of America. He heads a
regime that, on the face, looks democratic. But
factually it is a controlled version of democracy
spawned through rigging of ballot, spying over the
people, promulgation of coercive laws, and state
terror perpetrated through police and intelligence
network.
The
state of emergency
means that the country is in a situation of war and
faced with extreme danger to its survival. Under that
state of emergency, the government has the right to
arrest the people for any or no reason, and keep them
in prisons without trials for any length of time.
Under the cover of this
draconian law,
the
police powers
can be extended,
constitutional rights abrogated, and
censorship legalized.
One can simply imagine how insidious, unrepresentative
and inhuman regime of Hosni Mubarik is that since
1981, the year he succeeded the slain Anwar Sadat, he
never lifted the state of emergency.
Egypt has remained under the diabolic Emergency Law
since 1967, the year of war between Egypt and Israel.
During the despotic regime of Hosni
Mubarak, until 1994, some 17,000 people were detained
under the emergency law, while the number of
political captives and prisoners of
conscience was reported to be around 30,000.
The December 2010 parliamentary elections in Egypt
were entirely farcical. As a result of preemptive
media crackdown, mass arrests and banning of the
opposition candidates, and unabashed rigging, the
ruling party NDP won the elections with
thumping majority. Such is the nature of state
highhandedness in Egypt.
The trapping and addiction of power have stunted the
ability of Hosni Mubarak to comprehend the gravity of
the situation turning fiercer by the hours. All that
he has been able to do so far is to appoint a vice
president who is his chief of intelligence. This is
such a ridiculously cosmetic measure as to bring more
scorn and resistance to him. In these four days
innumerable protesters as well as riot police members
have either died or injured and there no let up in
this escalating tally of the fatalities
The Tunisian earth shaking protests motivated the
Egypt's suppressed people to come out in the streets.
Thus the historic "Day
of Anger" began on Janaury25. In four
day since the eruption of this revolution, countless
officials buildings have been burnt, the curfew
defied, the police forced to beat a retreat and army
to remain docile in face of the unprecedented violence
and fury unleashed by the unchained mammoth crowds of
Egyptians united under one slogan, "exit of Hosni
Mubarak" Besides, scant
socio-political freedom, Egypt suffers from chronic
poverty with 40 percent of families
living on a paltry income of roughly US $2 day. Egypt
ranks 89th as the most corrupt country
among 178 countries. The
Egyptian nation's violent outburst reflects the
cumulative backlash to the police and intelligence's
brutalities, the prolonged
state of emergency, absence of
free elections, unbridled
corruption, virtual ban on the freedom
of speech, acute
unemployment, poor wages, insufficient
housing, ever soaring
food price, galloping inflation, and poor
living conditions. The
redeeming signpost of this historic revolution is that
for the first time, Egyptians from different
socio-economic backgrounds and faiths have joined to
knock down an odious and notoriously anti -people
regime run by a person utterly insensitive to the
appalling plight of his own people all these years.
President Obama's
and for that matter the American administration's
response to this grass root revolution has been
rational and realistic. President Obama's has
impressed upon the besieged Egyptians president to
unfurl immediately the socio-economic and political
reforms that have been neglected under his rule for so
long. Whether
Mubarak heeds a timely or sane advice of his mentor,
would be known soon. But even if Mubarak announces the
stalled reforms that meet the rioters' demands, he
cannot stay in power as the first and foremost demand
of the raging protestors is his ouster. There is a
very slim possibility that a totally weakened,
humiliated, discredited and disgraced Egyptian
president can stem or stop the tide of revenge and
rebellion against his barbaric rule sustained by
bayonet and black inhuman laws. But the
man among the Arab dynastic regimes who came to his
support is
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
It is shameful and outrageous to see Saudi king
decrying and condemning the Egyptian people struggling
for their robbed rights by a person who ruled his
country like a new born Pharaoh and a dictator with
absolute powers. The king
himself lording over a family kingdom, is siding with
a person who kept his marvelous country on the
tenterhooks of stagnation through
political repression, a fraudulent
democratic order,
draconian laws,
police brutality and no less the
abominable cronyism for the tormenters of the Arab
people. Egypt, a leading Arab country with a glorious
and rich heritage has been reeling under an
exceptionally alienated, intimidating and corrupt
regime run by a myopic head of state like a miniature
of a ruthless
Pol Pot of
Cambodia. Egypt has
been surviving on the alms of the United States and
the remittances of her expatriate labor force. One
cannot see any major and notable reform that was put
in place for the economic stability, social uplift of
its people or for genuine representative and
accountable system of governance. Hosni
Mubarak has no option but to srurender to the will of
people. The brutal tactics by his army and police have
failed to subdue the swelling crowds of fury- charged
Egyptians. He will have to leave his country like Ali
of Tunisia and find protection under the wings of a
dynastic religious potentate king Abdullah, who is
also destined to meet his ignoble end in the
predictable future. Similar
horrific destiny would befall to the hereditary
dispensations ruling their hapless people in a fashion
as if the world was still existing in the mediaeval
ages. The days of these outposts of family dynasties
and hereditary autocracies are certainly numbered. No
matter how stubbornly they resist, they cannot stop
the inevitable. |
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