Rewriting History In Real Time: Egypt

If the Arab Spring can say to have "started" anywhere, it was in Tunisia on December 18, 2010 in rural Sidi Bouzid when a 26 year old vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, gravely insulted by an authoritarian policewoman, set himself on fire, igniting weeks of demonstrations that spread across the country and unseated Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years of repressive rule. Protests spread rapidly to Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Syria, Bahrain, Libya and Egypt. Less than a month after the protests started Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia and one month after that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned following 18 days of massive protests, ending 3 decades as president/dictator. Last week Tunisia had a freely contested presidential election and will likely form a broad coalition government after next month's runoffs.

That isn't the how things turned out in Egypt, which has fallen under the iron grip of a violent, repressive military dictatorship. And earlier today, that dictatorship utterly rehabilitated the 86 year old Hosni Mubarak who had been convicted of every kind of corruption under the sun and for the murder of 846 Egyptians. A pack of Mubarak political and business cronies and his two crooked sons, Gamal and Alaa, also saw all their charges thrown out. Mubarak's life sentence was reversed-- counter-revolution in action, courtesy of the new dictator, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who had been Mubarak's equivalent of the head of the CIA.

Commenting on the verdict, deputy Head of the Conference Party Salah Hasaballah said that “Egyptians are more concerned with the political future of their country than with the past."

Hasaballah told Ahram Online that Mubarak had given a lot to Egypt during his presidency and “after two revolutions and after a new elected president, our priorities are to focus on how to build the new Egypt.”

Political analyst Mohamed El-Agaty of the Arab Forum for Alternatives thinktank told Ahram Online that he expects that the political backlash to the verdict to be small and to pass quickly.

El-Agaty argued that the state and media have been propagating a state of "panic" that will not allow for any mobilisation against the verdict.

"It was also clear from the start that this case will go nowhere… there are no proper laws to fight corruption…you cant put them [former regime figures] on trial using their own laws," he opined.

Head of the liberal Constitution Party Hala Shukrallah told Ahram Online that politically things "are going back to how they were before the January 25 revolution."

"The old political order is being reinstated… even the figures of the old regime are resurfacing," she said.

The decision more or less acquits the entire regime of the crimes that sparked the revolution in Egypt in the first place. Tahrir Square was closed down immediately. Today's NY Times points out that "state-run and pro-government media now routinely denounce the pro-democracy activists who led the 2011 uprising as a 'fifth column' out to undermine the state. Some of the most prominent activists are in prison, and the Islamists who dominated the elections are now jailed as terrorists." Earlier this month prosecutor's asked for the death sentence for the elected president, Mohammed Morsi, who was overthrown and put in prison by the military junta. His supporters are still being imprisoned and murdered by the authorities.

Too late to rehabilitate Gaddafi... but something tells me Bashar al Assad's public image is going to undergo quite the transformation in coming months. As for Egypt... the revolution is over. Better luck next time. The muderous "king" of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifah, called Mubarak to congratulate him. Presumably the two of them had a good laugh over the fake Bahraini elections underway now.