http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8691/pub_detail.asp
February 11, 2011 The Perils of a Leaderless Revolution <http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/authors/id.119/author_detail.asp> Amir Taheri http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110210_EgyptCrowd.jpg To many Egyptians, the mass gathering in Tahrir Square in Cairo has won the right to be called a revolution. They call it "our revolution" as distinct from "their revolution" -- the 1952 coup in which army officers toppled the monarchy. That revolution was nurtured in barracks and in secret. Today's revolution is taking shape in Facebookpages, Twitter and text messages, gatherings in streets, TV programs and, of course, the endless jamboree on Tahrir Square, all of it in the open. In just two weeks, the formal structures of the Egyptian state have become irrelevant. Titles such as president, vice president, prime minister and so on have become almost meaningless -- with ghosts bearing such titles making occasional appearances in haunted TV studios. But these ghosts are distributing lots of sweets. The pay of some 6.3 million government employees is to rise by 15 percent. Subsidies for 18 products of mass consumption, including bread, are to be hiked by 12 percent. The cost of these "gifts to the people" from President Hosni Mubarak is estimated at $15 billion for the first year alone. Then there has been Mubarak's symphony of concessions: naming a vice president, as he'd refused to do for 31 years; announcing that neither he nor his son Gamal will run in the coming presidential election -- even setting aside the regime's most repressive weapon, the State of Emergency. Mubarak next named a new government -- then decapitated his own National Democratic Party by dismissing its top 75 leaders. He also suspended the parliament. Mubarak then appointed a committee to amend the Constitution to reduce the powers of the president, something he had refused to consider for three decades. The crescendo in this symphony came Tuesday, when Mubarak said he "understood and approved" the demonstrators' demands and found them "fully justified." In other words, he, too, is prepared to shout the slogan "Go Away!" . . . though without going away. Meanwhile, Vice President Omar Suleimanmisses no opportunity to declare that his task is "to fulfil the demands of the people." Don't be surprised if he, too, ends up visiting Tahrir Square. The more concessions Mubarak gave, the stronger "our revolution" became. No one wishes to be on the side of a loser. Over the last few days, Egyptian notables have taken the road to Tahrir Square to show their "solidarity." Tycoons who owe their fortunes to Mubarak's corrupt regime bring food and drink for "the suffering heroes of our revolution." Novelists, poets and journalists, many on the government payroll all their lives, denounce "the ravages of despotism." Political parties have lost much of the little moral authority they had. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, a semi-clandestine movement with 80 years of experience, appears unable to understand the situation and adopt a strategy for dealing with it. The Egyptians might call it "our revolution." Right now, however, this embryonic event is nobody's revolution precisely because everyone claims it. Worse, all those who claim to own it don't know what they want to do with it. Tahrir Square has failed to produce a leadership and a program beyond continuing the demonstrations. If things are to be decided by demonstrations, the demonstrators have won and Mubarak has lost. But what have they won and what are they going to do with it? "Our revolution" is costing Egypt more than $300 million a day, the loss of 6 percent of the gross domestic product so far. City after city is trying to have its own Tahrir Square. This week brought the start of what could be a general strike in the Suez Canal, Egypt's biggest income source. Yet we are also hearing the first murmurs about the armed forces stepping in to "save the nation from collapse." The youths who started "our revolution" wanted to get out of a system created by "their revolution." With the noise of boots beginning to be heard, they may find out that while starting a revolution is easy, getting out of one is difficult. <http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/index.php> FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Amir Taheri writes for the <http://www.nypost.com/> NY Post and the <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431404575067193404330842.h tml?mod=googlenews_wsj> Wall Street Journal. His latest book isThe Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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