Egypt is a massive living organism — a web of ticking clocks, each set to a slightly different millisecond. With approximately 80 million in the country, 18 million of whom are woven into the streets and buildings of Cairo, the traffic of the city may crawl but many would say it is only by the will of God that it continues to flow at all. People are everywhere — driving, jumping off buses, walking, bicycling … ticking minute by minute through the days and nights of the city. Doctors, valets, belly dancers and beggars … Cairo keeps 18 million cogs in one of the world’s busiest wheels. This series takes a magnifying glass to one person, a representative of a job that keeps the city ticking — an eye-level shot that takes you through a day in the life of a cog in the wheel of Cairo.
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| — | Nevine El Shabrawy |
In this article, Mr. El-Hamalawy exposes the urgent need to reform Egypt’s security apparatus. The entire relationship between the SCAF, army, interior ministry, and its army of conscripts (that amount to little more than thugs) is fundamentally flawed. Not only that, but most of the people enlisted to do the security apparatus’ dirtiest work (putting down protests, beating and torturing civilians) are themselves severely mistreated. This results in a disgusting cycle in which torturer and tortured sometimes overlap, and no accountability is taken for who starts the brutal cycle.
Although he exposes this reality, Mr. El-Hamalawy does little to offer a solution for the problem or some potential strategy for security reform rather than to support lower level police protests against the higher ranks of the Interior Ministry and the army. But what does that lead to? It certainly won’t provide security and stability if the police are in rebellion. And as far as I know, although every presidential candidate has discussed the importance of re-establishing security in the streets of Egypt, none of them have provided a detailed plan for restoring security, let alone a plan for restoring it in a meaningful, sustainable way that doesn’t repeat the cycle of mistreatment of police/conscripts leading to mistreatment of protesters/civilians. If anyone knows of a candidate with such plans, please let me know.
We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: Yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.
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| — | T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom |
Also, that Coptic lawyer, who was trying to have a speed bump built in front of his home…he was a National Democratic Party (Mubarak’s former political party) member. Sigh.
Two opposing viewpoints on how much progress Egypt’s democratic transition has made given real debates and elections now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/opinion/21iht-edzewail21.html?pagewanted=1
http://www.egyptindependent.com/opinion/presidential-race-game-egyptian-roulette
I tend to agree more with Mr. Zewail’s more optimistic stance in the first article. Mr. Al Khamissi makes a very compelling pessimistic argument in the second, backed by real facts about the financial and political distortions of this presidential election, but I can’t help but see the silver lining here. How is the country supposed to create a healthy political environment without ever having had elections? Doesn’t it have to go through this rough process at first, where Egyptian democracy is chaotic, messy, and uneven, yet a start towards better governance, more accountability, and free and fair elections? How will the country grow politically without going through these initial political difficulties? Or does Mr. Al Khamissi rather we stick to the old dictators that promised for decades that they would bring about the conditions for real democracy? I doubt he thinks that but at the very least he should recognize that flawed elections are better than no elections at all. At least we have options to vote for!
And one more thing. Mr. Al Khamissi’s most important point (but not his main one): don’t vote for an Islamist or feloul candidate!
