Ten years after January, what is the position of Egyptians on the revolution?

In his book "Why Don't the Egyptians rise up?"

Egyptian political activist and novelist Alaa Al-Aswany says, "What prevents Egyptians from protesting is their dire experience of repression and their complete despair at reform."

But the interesting thing is that this book was published in 2010, that is, a few months before the outbreak of the January 25 revolution, and the most interesting thing is that Al-Aswany, 10 years after the revolution, could not publish a book with such a title, but rather that he could not enter Egypt itself.

Al-Aswany is like other thousands of citizens who left Egypt during the post-revolution years, either in despair from political and economic reform or fear of security persecution in something similar to exile, and this appears in part to summarize the situation of the Egyptians and their return to square zero or the pre-zero that they lived during the days of the president Deposed Hosni Mubarak.

After a full decade of the Egyptians ’revolution during the Mubarak era, whose slogan was“ Live… Freedom… Social Justice ”, the noose on freedoms has increased, and there is no longer a political climate that is mentioned except by mentioning the number of detainees who exceeded 60,000 detainees, according to local and international human rights reports.

In addition to the economic deterioration that can be touched through the exacerbation of external debts, which exceeded 123 billion dollars, while it did not exceed 36.5 billion dollars during the Mubarak era, and the internal debts, which amounted to more than 4 trillion Egyptian pounds, while it was 960 billion Egyptian pounds only before the revolution. Poverty rates reached 29.7%, and 10 years ago they did not exceed 21.6%.

As for the social justice that Egyptians exhausted their throats in Tahrir Square demanding 10 years ago, there is no indication of failure to achieve it from the large number of human rights reports and research studies that talk about the disappearance of the middle class in Egypt.

Based on all this, the question posed by Aswani 10 years ago is renewed, why do not the Egyptians revolt?

Is it the fear of the current regime's reaction?

Or the unwillingness to repeat the failure of the January revolution?

Or frustration and weakness of the spirit of belonging to the homeland?

Or are there other reasons?

The Egyptians ’revolution in January 2011 led to the ouster of former President Mubarak (Al-Jazeera Net-Archive)

It may seem worthy to precede the question about the reason why Egyptians do not revolt, a question about the degree of citizen’s satisfaction with the current system of government or the likelihood of it reaching the level of anger that sparked widespread protest.

The last quarter of 2019 was crucial to answering this question, after nearly 6 years of the rule of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who led a military coup against the elected President Mohamed Morsi, on July 3, 2013, the anger of Egyptians reached an unprecedented level since the January Revolution after The Egyptian contractor and artist, Muhammad Ali, revealed files of economic corruption within sectors of the army.

In mid-September of that year, the tag "Kifaya, Stay Sissy" was published locally, and even reached third place in the world on the social networking site "Twitter", as Egyptians tweeted on the tag "Leave O Sisi" with about a million tweets.

On September 20, 2019, crowds of Egyptians went out in different governorates demanding the departure of Sisi, and for the first time, pictures of the Egyptian president were seen tearing and burning in the streets, and on the same day of the following year, citizens also protested to a lesser extent due to the wave of arrests that preceded the call to demonstrate alongside the security restrictions Dense in all provinces.

In a different way, citizens expressed their anger and abstained from participating in the parliamentary elections that were held between August and December last year. Turnout in the Senate elections did not exceed 14%, while participation in the House of Representatives elections was 28%.

Even those who participated in the elections, there is a significant number, among them who decided to nullify their vote. According to official statistics, there are 4 and a half million invalid electoral votes in the House of Representatives elections out of 18 million electoral cards in the individual and list systems, in addition to one million and 400 thousand invalid votes in the House elections. Sheikhs of 8 million voters.

The number of voters registered in the election tables in Egypt is about 63 million voters.

In addition, the regime itself realizes the extent of the anger, and this is evident in view of the security tightening in all major fields coinciding with the anniversary of January 25 of each year, and the attempt to obliterate everything related to the revolution that broke out 10 years ago and demonize those who carried it out who are now between death, murder and arrest. And negation.

The Egyptians returned to Square Zero 10 years after their revolution (Al-Jazeera Net)

Why don't they revolt?

There is an opinion adopted by many thinkers and politicians that the Egyptian does not revolt until after the sufficiency is completely empty, according to what Al-Aswany said in his book "Why do not the Egyptians revolt?"

The Egyptians are accustomed to moving away from power as much as possible .. ignoring it and enduring its harm from time to time, mocking it among themselves and then making - far from it - their true little world .. And in the few times that a revolution occurred in Egypt, there was a true and loyal leader who was believed by the people and revolted by his leadership against injustice. .

However, the director of the Egyptian Center for Media and Public Opinion Studies, Mustafa Khoudary, has a different opinion. He considers popular revolutions not a straight line, but a wave line, similar in behavior to alternating electric current, so there is no people throughout history that lives in a continuous revolution.

Contrary to Al-Aswany's opinion, Khoudary said - to Al Jazeera Net - that the Egyptian people are among the most revolts against their rulers, describing them as a young society that lives a popular movement at least once every generation.

And he continued, "But any popular movement its results depend on several factors, including the security grip of the ruling regimes, the interventions of the deep state, regional and international conditions ..."

Regarding what prevents Egyptians from revolting against the current situation, the researcher in the field of public opinion stressed that despite the multiplicity of factors that affect the speed and length of the rising wave arc of the Egyptian revolution;

This will not prevent the revolutionary wave from rising, perhaps delaying it a little, but it will happen by the push of inertia.

In this, Khoudary explained that revolutions are not a luxury until people race to live, and they are not a sporting activity until societies practice it in their spare time. He continued, "Revolutions are a defensive behavior that peoples practice in defense of themselves in the face of injustice and tyranny of the ruling regimes."

Usually rulers begin their period of rule with slogans of providing security, freedom and the human needs of their people.

Then their sense of self and the desire to remain in power and bequeath it to their families swells, so slogans are transformed, promises are changed, injustice and tyranny appear, so societies have a need to defend themselves against what the rulers do, and then revolutions occur, according to Khoudary.

Explosion approached

As for the decisive factor in the Egyptian revolution, he stressed that the Sisi regime has done everything that necessitates the revolution against it, expecting it to erupt soon.

Khoudary added, "Al-Sisi practiced injustice against Egyptians of all classes, and hastened to waste justice, extrajudicial killings, and the destruction of the economic and social aspects of life, in addition to selling the homeland's lands - the Tiran and Sanafir Agreement - and wasting its wealth - gas deposits in the Mediterranean and the old companies that are being done His liquidation - then his neglect of Egypt's rights to the Nile water, in addition to his dwarfing of Egypt's historical role as the leader of the region.

For his part, political activist Ahmed Al-Baqry said that the unprecedented repression that Egyptians experienced was the motivation for protesting in the streets as a only way, regardless of the cost, citing the example of the first September 20 demonstrations.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, he explained the diversity of the means used by the people to declare their rejection of the current regime, such as their reluctance to participate in the elections, which he described as farce.

As for the regime, it does not realize the rejectionist messages of the people. According to the political activist, the despot usually sees that he is the strong and unbeatable until the last moments of his rule, and then the collapse comes within minutes, as happened with the ousted regime of Mubarak.

Al-Baqri expected that the coming years will witness many transformations that will be reflected in the opposition and the Egyptians in general, indicating that the current regime is no longer as strong as it was 8 years ago due to several factors, the most important of which are regional influences such as lifting the siege on Qatar and Turkey's steadfastness in the face of the failed coup attempt. And Tunisia's success in avoiding the trap of the counter-revolution.