{"id":70,"date":"2011-05-23T14:10:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T14:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/?p=70"},"modified":"2011-05-23T14:10:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T14:10:00","slug":"regroup-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"Regroup Now!"},"content":{"rendered":"
We are under attack and our dreams are under siege. After a little over three months it is becoming deadly clear that certain forces are trying to outflank us, and they have already had some success. We must regroup now or all is lost and noble\u00a0sentiments and aspirations<\/a> that we\u00a0experienced will be nothing more than a fading memory. The stuff of\u00a0lamentations\u00a0over what could have been and how we it let slip our grasp.<\/p>\n

Some readers at this point might object: What are you whining about? Why this talk of gloom, conspiracy and dark forces? Shouldn’t we be focused on the\u00a0upcoming\u00a0parliamentary elections?<\/p>\n

Let me first try to go over what we have managed to accomplish:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We got most of Mubark’s\u00a0coterie under detention and they are being tried for corruption<\/li>\n
  2. Mubark, his sons, and wife are facing charges of corruption (though no criminal charges have been pressed yet).\u00a0<\/li>\n
  3. We have temporary constitution that limits the power of the president, and the duration of his\/her presidency (never mind that it gives the supreme\u00a0councle of the armed forces [SCAF] unchecked power\u00a0for the time being).\u00a0<\/li>\n
  4. We have some sort of\u00a0road map for democratic transition where we are having \u00a0parliamentary elections in September, followed by presidential elections six months later.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  5. We have Prime\u00a0Minster\u00a0who supported the revolution, and who many still\u00a0believe\u00a0is genuinely a decent person (though many have doubts about his ability to assert the demands of the revolution).\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So why complain? Can’t we just hold-on for a few more months and get the representative parliament\u00a0of our dreams and then a few more a get an elected president? The SCAF and\u00a0government\u00a0seem to be telling us to do just that. They don’t seem to like people expressing any sort of complaints or\u00a0grievances. They even managed to pass an anti-protest law!!! Quite ironic, after a revolution. It all boils down to a crisis of trust.<\/p>\n

    Trust broken with a butt of a gun<\/b>
    In the early hours of the February the 26th, I stood with a couple of\u00a0hundred\u00a0revolutionaries in front of the People’s Assembly building. We were all gathered for sit-in, demanding that Shafik and his\u00a0cabinet step-down. This was the same cabinet that Mubarak put in place in his last days and that the SCAF had kept for mysterious reasons. That night many of us were\u00a0severely beaten,\u00a0electrocuted, and subject all sorts of abuse. In one\u00a0    harrowing account<\/a> of the\u00a0torture that went on that night, it is clear that many in the army are still loyal to Mubarak. The army officers reveled in forcing the\u00a0protesters\u00a0to cry “long live Mubarak”. I was lucky to have escaped being captured, I was running and hiding in nearby streets.<\/p>\n

    The SCAF tried to deny any wrong doing and often declared that it never incarcerated any of the\u00a0protesters. Their\u00a0narrative does not hold much water<\/a>, and runs counter to the many eye witness accounts. The SCAF has shown itself very trusting of the late\u00a0regime’s corrupt figures. This was clearly \u00a0demonstrated in the appointment of the governors, many of who were from the\u00a0minister\u00a0of interior who were notorious for their\u00a0involvement\u00a0in torture cases, and others who have often spoken out vocally\u00a0against\u00a0the revolution.<\/p>\n

    The SCAF\u00a0reputation\u00a0now\u00a0reeks<\/a>\u00a0of anything \u00a0to but trustworthiness. I firmly\u00a0believe it becoming exceedingly hard to see them as honorable custodian of our revolution. Their decision making is opaque and their actions are far from\u00a0comforting. It is very hard to explain how the army highly trained special forces were being used to hunt and incarcerate\u00a0protesters\u00a0while idling when churches were being burnt or peaceful \u00a0protesters\u00a0were being shot at<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Why regroup, why a second Friday of Anger?<\/b>
    The SCAF has proven itself to be at best incompetent in helping achieve the     demands of the\u00a0revolution<\/a>, and at worst having designs on post revolutionary political landscape to serve the best\u00a0interests of the SCAF generals. The SCAF generals maintain massive economic interests<\/a>\u00a0and no civilian oversight. One can see that it would be hard for generals to abandon many of their perks for the greater interest of the country. I find it very suspicious that a supposed scholar like Moataz Abdel-Fattah<\/a> tries to push forth the notion that SCAF is totally immune to ambitions of its generals and that there is something, that almost veers on the supernatural, the will make them the honest executors of the people’s will. Recalling the faces of the soldiers chasing in on February 26th and their determination to capture and\u00a0torture\u00a0makes me immune such flimsy (or more likely\u00a0disingenuous)\u00a0 arguments.<\/p>\n

    What do we do? Fire the SCAF?<\/b>
    The SCAF for all its sins still maintains a semblance of stability and yet we would never trade away our freedom and our revolution for this poor attempt at maintaining “order”. We are pressing forward     demands<\/a> that we hope will keep the SCAF straight, yet those demands are still being worked out, refined and\u00a0crystallized.<\/p>\n

    Over the past few months a great deal of trust has been eroded and it is about time that SCAF pays attention to the revolutionaries and stop trying to undermine the spirit of the revolution. \u00a0I am looking forward to May27 where\u00a0amongst a sea of\u00a0competing\u00a0memes, the best ones will dominate.<\/p>\n

    What does the situation look like now?<\/b>
    It is best\u00a0captured in this brilliant graffiti by     Ganzeer<\/a>\u00a0showing a taking facing of a bicycle. The\u00a0revolutionaries are doing the\u00a0difficult act of moving forward while balancing a bread tray over their head. The bread tray is future of Egypt. The tank (SCAF) seems to be standing in the way. Together we can force the tank to change direction, and we are far more powerful than what naive sizing up of\u00a0strength\u00a0may suggest.<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    We are under attack and our dreams are under siege. After a little over three months it is becoming deadly clear that certain forces are trying to outflank us, and they have already had some success. We must regroup now or all is lost and noble\u00a0sentiments and aspirations that we\u00a0experienced will be nothing more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,6,61,14,10,22,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-boxes","category-egypt","category-may27","category-revolution","category-scaf","category-tahrir","category-unity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectionatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}