Arab unrest: perspectives - XLVII

A peep into history through Wikipedia and other sources, including the works of historians Michael Burleigh and Benny Morris, gives one some interesting and amazing facts to analyze the current situation in Egypt from a different perspective:
There should be no elections because polls could slow the revolution, hence the need for using violence as an effective tool to achieving the objective. This was the party line articulated by Vladimir Lenin to disrupt elections to the first State Duma. It also stipulated, among other things, that good-looking and handsome workers should seduce unremarkable daughters of prominent landlords with a view to marrying them and later usurping their property. But Lenin's greater emphasis was always on attacks on polling stations and destruction of records of election results. In later years however, an optimistic situation required Lenin to employ with alacrity a different strategy as Bolsheviks after securing the support of workers had begun to win important elections in early September of 1917 in important Russian industrial centers and by middle of September, they had formally acquired a majority in the St. Petersburg council. Earlier in February the same year, the tsarist government was toppled by popular protest and provisional government that was formed to replace the void left by the deposed tsar was in turn, overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the Great October Socialist Revolution ("November Revolution", according to the Gregorian Calendar). Weeks before the overthrow of the interim setup, war-weary soldiers had begun to defect government and contributed towards the surge of agitating workers by joining protests.
The situation in Egypt in November 2011 and Russia of November 1917 show remarkable similarities and strong differences. The present Egyptian situation also brings to mind frightening events of Russia when there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution was not globally recognized outside Petrograd. Those tumultuous times in the history of communist Russia led to the creation of Soviet Union in 1922.
Although, the military council of Egypt announced on Thursday that election plans would continue as planned (the first election in the post-Mubarak Egypt are scheduled to be held on Monday Nov 28, 2011), a state of extreme confusion, agitation, commotion and tumult in Egypt is giving birth to some legitimate fears about its direction after Mubarak. Are the present events in Egypt a step forward for its people? Is Egypt heading for a rigid winter after an Arab Spring?
The country is indeed experiencing a time of great turmoil as thousands of people have remained in Tahrir Square, rejecting the concessions offered during a Tuesday-night speech by Field Marshal Muhammed Hussein Tantawi, the chairman of the ruling military council which took power following Mubarak's overthrow. To its utter chagrin and dismay, however, at least one top military official has publicly joined demonstrators while others are said to be contemplating defecting the military.
On Friday, a day widely termed "last chance Friday", the protesters, who are said to be largely secular, expressed their vehement opposition to the nomination of a former prime minister to head a new civilian cabinet by the military. The demonstrators have already rejected "regrets" and "profound apologies" tendered by the military council for over 40 deaths and thousands of injuries among demonstrators during anti-military rallies. They present a formidable challenge to the military's grip on its rule as they demand immediate transfer of power to a civilian government.
Tantawi announced on state media that the presidential election will take place before July 2012 (the first time the military has set a deadline for the vote) and the planned Nov 28 parliamentary elections will go ahead, but the protesters in Tahrir and elsewhere in Cairo and the country largely remain unconvinced and uninterested in the "ranting" of a 79-year-old military chief. It is interesting to note that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which has been widely tipped to emerge as a dominant bloc in the civilian government if the elections are held, faces an unsavoury situation from which extrication is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Soon after protests erupted in Tahrir Square demanding the removal of Mubarak in the beginning of this year, the MB, one of the most organized parties in North Africa and the Middle East (the area hit by the democracy contagion), lost no time in articulating a policy, resets in order to become an acceptable component of the anti-regime force: it reinvented itself in an effective and meaningful manner as the situation necessitated a radical change in its outlook. The decision of Hassan al-Banna's party to replace its popular slogan "Islam is the solution" with "Egypt is the solution" is a case in point. It clearly demonstrates the shift in its approach, which is said to be broadly based on collaboration and enablement.
Although, the MB has different reasons to cite to defend its decision of supporting the constitutional referendum of March 2011, it is widely accused of becoming a military handmaiden because the latter had also supported the referendum that was opposed by a vast majority of liberals. It is also a fact that the organization owes its present legal status to the present Tantawi-led military setup to enable it to join the electioneering fray under the title (or rubric?) of Freedom and Justice Party that plans to contest up to half the seats by drawing a valuable lesson from the victory of "counter-revolutionary" Islamists in Algeria in 1987. Not only has the MB made the West greatly suspicious of its plans, it has alienated a large number of Egyptians with its program which, inter alia, states that the party "rejects the candidacy of women or Coptics for Egypt's presidency". Moreover, the West's growing weariness following the victory of Islamists in Tunisia, the emergence of an Islamist party in Friday's Morocco vote and the Libyan National Transitional Council's insistence that Shariah will be the main source of legislation in the post-Qadhafi era have only made its task to gain political space that it desires for itself in the future setup, more stupendous and profound. Reports that the US only wants to extract from an embattling Bashar al-Asad maximum concessions such as an end to Damascus' support to Hezbollah and Hamas and a paradigm shift in relations between Syria and its principal supporter Iran and that Washington does not want to topple the present Alawite government as the West fears that the void created by Bashar's fall would be filled by the MB's Syria chapter have not been of great help to the MB in Egypt either.
The MB in Egypt also faces criticism for allegedly striking a deal with the army whereby the latter will allow it to create its "ideological hegemony" in return for continuation of perks and privileges for "corporate" military, a charge the MB leadership vehemently and consistently denies. That the polls as planned are very much in the interest of MB and that the military must not be provided an excuse to postpone it, are two hard realities clearly demonstrated by its decision to remain on the sidelines of the on-going protests in the Tahrir Square. It will not be true that the MB has decided to keep itself completely away from the protest scene because its members are also there, albeit less enthusiastically and in fewer numbers. It helped organize an initial anti-army protest in Tahrir on Nov18, but gradually distanced itself from the growing violent protests. Its strategy requires it to refrain from contributing to events that could eventually lead to postponement of elections while it fully recognizes the fact that the protesters' anger is also directed against it for extracting a number of concessions from the generals. It is because of growing suspicions against the MB that one of its top leaders was forced out of Tahrir on Monday when he tried to visit the protesters.
The situation therefore, presents a particularly knotty dilemma for the party of the late Syed Qutb. It has decided to take part in protests but only with nominal strength so that it does not really contribute to a surge in Tahrir. The army with which it has allegedly cut a deal seems to be on a weak wicket despite its overt designs to continue "overseeing" whatever government emerges from parliamentary elections. The calls by Egyptian army's long-time bedrock supporter, the US, asking it to step aside "as soon as possible" amid reports that the West has covertly contributed to the surge in Tahrir Square have only added to MB's and the generals' woes.
The situation in Egypt is increasingly worrisome for the world in general and the region as also the Islamic world in particular. The turmoil is taking place in a country that was ruled by an autocrat, Mubarak, who was widely considered less noxious as compared to Hafez and his son, Saddam and Qadhafi. The situation in Egypt, therefore, leads to a very important question: Where will Syria and Libya head as it is generally argued with both genuine- and pseudo-profundity that "the worse the autocrat, the worse the chaos left in his wake"?-to be continued (The writer is this newspaper's News Editor)