I haven't blogged in a long while. instead I've been writing some articles like this one which was published in Campus magazine in its September issue of 2012.
I
love history. It’s a magical crystal ball that will enable you to read the
future. Like crystal balls so is history, it takes a well-trained and seasoned
reader to read into history correctly and know the future clearly. So allow me
to utilize my love for history and wear my seer gown to extract a tiny chapter of a relatively near future.
Our
tale starts some odd 33 years ago in a land once known as Persia, a beautiful
country with beautiful youth calling for freedoms, social justice and justice
to prevail in their lands. That was the backdrop for the following scene; an
airplane landing in the airport of Tehran carrying a grand ayatollah coming
home from exile, arriving with him on the self same flight his son and four
other influential figures in Persia-soon-to-be-known-as-Iran.
The
grand ayatollah is none other than El Khomeini the spiritual leader of the
Iranian hijacked revolution, with his son Ahmed; the four influential figures
are Ibrahim Yizdi, Abou el Hassan bani Sadr, Sadek Qutb and Dariush Frohu.
Ibrahim Yizdi went on to become foreign minister, Abou el Hassan bani Sadr
became the first president of Iran, Sadek Qutb Zada became a minister in the
first republic and Dariush Forhu was an Iranian nationalist who didn’t get a
formal position later but was a big enough public figure to be reckoned with.
El Khomeini formed an alliance with nationals, liberals and leftists,
like the four gentlemen mentioned above, then later he didn’t quite need them,
having already been crowned as supreme leader he started to see them as a
surplus to the state being created and a dangerous one too, and thus he started
eliminating them, each one met a different damned fate. Yizdi the once foreign
minister served as a leader to the Freedom Movement of Iran, which is
considered as an "illegal party" potentially terrorist by some factions within
the Iranian government. Abou el Hassan Bani Sadr, the first president of Iran
is now in exile inParis. Sadek Qutb Zada once a minister then executed after
being prosecuted for being against the holy revolution. Dariush Forhu however
was slaughtered in his house in Tehran with his wife on a cold evening in 1998.
My seer gown is
suggesting that those who came off that plane in Tehran with president Morsy
will meet a similar-but-not-so-bloody fate like those who came off that plane
with grand Ayatollah el Khomeini. The not so bloody fate is only due to
different circumstance between Iran then and Egypt now, different times and
different cultures. But the ideology is similar and whoever isn’t with us is
against us and “we” are representing a holy plan designed by god.
This article is not
about history, it’s about the present and the future being formulated now by
our activists, the activists who came off the plane with president Morsy having
squeezed a record-breaking ton of lemon upon themselves (derived from the Egyptian idiom) to help him reach the
presidential seat without having as much as a written promise or even "wasl
amana" to guarantee that the president won’t throw them in the first thrash bin
when his use for them is done.
Our great activists
are great people in fact; they are formed of the remaining of the Kefaya
movement, whatever 6 April has become and some other similar civil movements.
The ideologies of these activists are mostly leftists with some liberals to go
with them and the reason I call them great is that they managed to make a
historical breakthrough in the Egyptian political scene by starting the Jan25
revolution and leading the way for the Egyptian people to voice their opinion
for the first time. This is where the greatness ends.
Activists in Egypt
are the only faction with a true pure heart and honest intention. But like
Madonna famously sang “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. It is
never enough to do your best in order to succeed; first you need to know what
to do then do your best at it. Alas, activists were never sure of what they are
supposed to do, always cornered in the ‘reaction’ corner ever since the 18 days
were over, never taking a ‘proactive’ stand beating the lurking powers of the
dark, catching them off guard; never uniting but always diving themselves as
leftists, liberals and whatevers wanting to gain more spotlight, more Twitter
followers, seeking a louder voice to reach more and affect less. They managed
to define an enemy or two but keeping a blind eye on their foe-for-a-friend
always echoing the witty thoughts coming out of that friend’s informal media
beacons.
I can understand
some of the reasons behind all that. First; the absence of a true leader to
that revolution, someone who would unite the divided brothers. Second; the
temptation of personal glory, a man walks this earth with a tag on his forehead
yelling “recognize me”, a big fellowship on twitter, hundreds of retweets, opinion
echoed many times and becoming mainstream is recognition that we all seek
after, a temptation only a few of us can fight. Incorporate both reasons and
you get a weak body that any organized entity can beat.
The outcome of our
beloved activists has been a big fat zero. A shy representation in the
dissolved parliament, a comical existence in the founding committee of the constitution and a lemonade parade in the
presidential election, leaving the Egyptian population to choose between the two
main enemies of the revolution of Jan25. The revolution that was kidnapped
twice thus far, the last one to manage to take it all was with the aid of the
activists infamously claiming to be choosing the one closer to the revolution
and easier to oppose later.
The elections are
done and dusted and the president won by more lemon consumed than that in all
the Pril bottles ever sold and what is equivalent to all Egypt’s lemon
production for the season leaving us with an ominous winter filled with antibiotics
and influenza. His Excellency embarked on his mission to make sure his state is
being correctly constructed, removing the real threat to his doctrine in
abolishing the constitutional decree and performing a soft coupe in the army to
castrate its ability to perform a coupe of its own.
Then came the role of the
media and civil already weak opposition by closing a popular channel among the
masses but with an unpleasant reputation among the activists in El Faraaen,
jailing its owner and lead anchorman Tawfik-TheDuck-Okasha. Passing by a
mediocre newspaper that is considered a darker shade of mustard-yellow, a
newspaper that manages to give tabloids a bad name and closed it with its
editor in chief now prosecuted for insulting his Excellency’s person. It
doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know where the next mouth being shut or what
is his Excellency’s stand on freedom of speech.
One would say that
those who helped the president reach office will be rewarded in any form, that
“one” is definitely just fresh here out of some Dr Seuss book. A prominent
figure in his Excellency’s clan called Essam el Erian (literally translated
into Essam the nude dude) came out with a Twitter scathing attack on the
leftists of the country calling them as a group influenced by foreign enemies
of the state, funded by foreign enemies of the state, dived, religion-hating
and arrogance. Ironically all that could be directed towards El Erian’s clan
but for being divided, which verily is the leftists’ biggest sin. The leftists
as well are of a small number themselves but at the same time these radicals
have the strongest mass mobilization ability among all the potential opposition
of his Excellency’s new founded state. That step outraged many commentators on
the middle east and even enraged the FAO’s representative in Egypt crying on
the amount of lemon wasted during the elections not a month ago, saying it's all
been squeezed in vain!
Lemon aside. The
amount of challenges ahead is huge. The intention to turn this country in to
something that is the opposite of what was called for during Jan25 is out
there. And that requires a united opposition to lead the fight and form a front
calling for preserving the identity of the state and the freedoms of the
people. The ball is still in the field of the activists to undo what was done,
and rewrite a history for them, a more glorious history than that is currently
being stolen from them and tampered with.
