مش عارفه اقول اضحكي يا ثورة ولا عيطي يا ثورة

بس احلى رد على هذا الموقف جاء من استاذي العزيزعليا جدا د.اسعد ابو خليل على الفيس بوك لما علق

بعد قيام نائب سلفي في البرلمان المصري برفع الآذان, أقترح ان يقف نائب علماني (إذا توفّر) في الجلسة القادمة ويصيح: السح الدح إنبو الخ

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Tawfik Okasha of the counter-revolutionary feloul channel al Fara3een is probably one of the most intellectually repugnant individuals to exist in both the public and private spheres. In fact, in an attempt to discredit Mohamed ElBaradei, he once defined the qualifications for the presidency of Egypt as someone who knows how to feed ducks or in plain Egyptian slang ” حد يعرف يزغط دكر البط والوز”. And then I lamented that this guy was actually a member of parliament at some point. Sometimes it’s hard to think of his words as anything but a sick joke. That is until you run into someone in the street who regurgitates his otherwise abhorrent statements. That’s why when I read this article about him in Al Ahram, it gave me great pleasure that I found someone who can capture my sentiments in a way I could never do. I strongly urge you to read the full article by clicking here. In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt:

Initially, few understood what Al Fara’een was about, other than the fact that it was the mouthpiece of unreservedly counterrevolutionary sentiment, purporting to represent the so called Silent Majority: perhaps the greatest lie of all, that silent majority, since while a majority might possibly be against change, silence would make its position irrelevant. Al Fara’een does share many of the views of the Honourable Citizen as SCAF must imagine him, expressing — first and foremost — concern over the Stability of the State, the catchword of the Mubarak regime and all that it stands for: besides culturally articulated incompetence and corruption, in other words, not only stupidity and ignorance but also an astounding capacity to defecate from the mouth. In this sense Al Fara’een is the patron channel of a particularly spurious and/or deluded version of the social as well as the political status quo; in such modes of discourse, where anything we don’t know is suspect though we hardly know anything, and where anyone in any way different from the speaker however otherwise similar deserves instant elimination, whether a statement is spurious or deluded matters little.

[...]

Most of Al Fara’een’s air time, aside from Fox News-like patriotism and first-anti-25 Jan-then-pro-SCAF propaganda, consists of the Okasha addressing its nonexistent constituency in the informal and (to use its own word) “mastaba” manner of a well-to-do fellah dictating opinions to a loving, presumably equally non-human gathering of villagers (there is evidence that such creatures do exist, but let’s hope they are no majority). Unlike its oily, accent-less pre-25 Jan image — the one in which it is known to have said, to the word, “I hold President Mubarak sacred” — the Okasha’s present, mastaba-bound demeanour is so utterly like that of a wicked old peasant woman, one with neither the upbringing nor the intelligence to maintain even a veneer of respectability, that it tends to induce laughter more than any other response. But aside from the Okasha being a comic diversion — people laugh at faeces, after all, precisely because it is nauseating — the Okasha poses distressing questions about dignity, reality and the fellahin.

Catch Feloul…

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It has been one year since the people’s revolution ignited on Egyptian streets leading to the iconic Tahrir Square. The euphoria of the revolution has been tempered by the reality of a deeply entrenched system that permeates government institutions, society and individuals. It is now apparent that there are two main yet broad contributions to the revolution: the political awakening among various segments of society, particularly the youth, who broke the fear barrier that was naturally instilled in many dictatorial settings; and the exposure of the roots of a cancerous regime that only tricks parts of the body that it healed itself without treatment. I would be remiss to not mention that Egypt’s revolution was at its core a mass movement that was leaderless, but one that nevertheless did not experience a power vacuum.  Indeed, the Egyptian revolution precipitated a coup d’etat by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) as “damage control” to save the remnants of a system in which it had so much at stake. The details of the relationship between the military and the Mubarak regime is intricate and deserves its own post, thus, I will delve in it later.

Tunisia, however, also saw the military playing a key role in the removal of Ben Ali when it sided with the revolutionaries. So why did SCAF not follow suit and hand over powers to a transitional civilian council composed of experts, politicians, and representatives of various segments of society much like the Higher Authority for the Achievement of Revolution Objectives, Political Reform and Democratic Transition in Tunisia? Why did SCAF include articles that transferred greater power to itself in a referendum under the guise of constitution first or later? Why does SCAF accuse the same activists, protesters and civil society actors who were the core of the revolution of being “thugs” and foreign agents? Why does SCAF crack down on rights organizations for lack of transparency while it takes $1.3 billion from the U.S. in military aid that is not subject to parliamentary oversight? The answers to these questions are much more complicated than “the military generals want to rule Egypt.”  This suggestion would dismiss their substantive interests that were built over the last 60 years for some abstract idea of political ambition, even if they eventually fall into this position. It is also clear from the parliamentary elections that the political structure of Mubarak’s regime has taken a hit, so this is not a mere return to the Felool (remnants of the regime) either. Egypt is embarking on a new system, but the military council is a body that seeks to ensure its survival beyond any one ruler. Unfortunately, I will not delve into the transformation of the military over the past three regimes (at least not now), but I will point out the crucial Military-Enterprise Complex in Egypt, in the form of the National Services Projects Organization (NSPO), which is both a taboo subject and a pervasive entity insofar as it is tied with foreign relations, economic stagnation and internal politics. Zeinab Abul-Magd writes a very crucial and enlightening article on this in Jadaliyya.

In short, NSPO was created by former President Anwar Sadat to mollify the generals, who had up to the Camp David Treaty been key actors in both Nasser and Sadat’s regimes. The NSPO funnels foreign military aid into enterprises such as military-brand gas stations, factories, hotels, food products and everyday needs. The oversight on the aid and the industries would likely expose an economically unsound, corrupt, rotten and draconian system run by the military. As such, SCAF has two central needs and demands to ensure its future in the next phase in Egypt: immunity from prosecution in crimes committed throughout the revolution, and supra-constitutional principles that circumvent any process of transparency or budgetary oversight over military aid. The Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), which now controls nearly 45% of the People’s Assembly, has already vaguely suggested granting SCAF immunity to ensure a peaceful transition to civilian rule – a compromise that will be harder on revolutionaries and the families of victims than any other segment of society. The latter demand, however, remains an explosive subject that threatens both the economic stability of the next phase of the transition in which parliament allegedly plays a bigger role, and the lifeline of a military council that makes more money off of being businessmen than generals. In spite of any deals or promises, SCAF’s compromises with FJP have only sparked the ire of revolutionaries, who are keen on a full democratic transition, and to dismiss the young activists as crucial actors is to fall into the same traps as Mubarak. Indeed, SCAF, which conspicuously unveiled itself as the guarantor of the revolution early on now stands to be the main obstacle to a democratic transition – not merely in the question of giving up power, but in its problematic choice between its financial institution and Egypt’s economic well-being that is the livelihood of the majority young Egyptians.

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Optimists suggest this particular change will inevitably lead to more expansive (or rather fundamental) rights for women, including the right to drive and travel without male consent or chaperone. After all, the freedom to participate cannot be divorced from the freedom to move. Unfortunately, some of these reforms do not actually kick in until 2015, making their implementation someone else’s “problem.” So as other Arab leaders scramble to implement immediate and at times hasty reforms to save themselves from the downward spiral their dictator club is falling into, the Saudi King seems to be coasting down a highway paved with cash handouts and distant promises. If the King was indeed serious about change, he would be concerned about the high likelihood that ultra-conservative elements like Prince Nayef will be in charge of implementing these reforms — that is four long years from now or also known as a lifetime in politics. While political reform in the Arab world has become synonymous with consolidation of authoritarian powers or at best failed experiments, there is a grain of optimism in this otherwise delapitated field of dreams — that is perhaps just now dictators are actually beginning to fear their people.

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