Today is the 40th day since you died. I could say that I’m getting used to it, but you know I’m not and never will. You were a lens through which I could look at this city in which I live. Cairo. And the country, and its history, within which this city unfolds: Egypt. We met seven years ago, but we both know we met decades ago, and that I was your son too. What a surprise to meet you in the way I did. To be divided by a language that even after 13 years here I cannot use to express nuance and detail. We both know the reasons for this, and no apologies were necessary in our relation. At any rate, we never needed words.

The most beautiful thing for me was precisely our silence. That we were obliged to speak another language; that I was obliged, and you too, to communicate with our minds, and our expressions. In a world so damaged by language, where language is so often inadequate, we passed into another arena, where nothing was not understood, and where indeed multiple levels of meaning unfolded, because we could speak with the slightest of gestures, and mostly simply through the eyes. And so when we laughed we laughed a pure laugh that could never be shared among those whose connection in language was pure, because language never got in the way; it wasn’t ever a filter in our human experience together.

When you died I said to one of our mutual friends, a writer and a great writer at that, that I wanted your life to be marked. That someone must defend you, and publicly. You were not under attack personally, neither in life nor in death. But the kind of person you are is fast disappearing from the landscape, and I wanted you to be remembered. He wrote for you, and probably you saw it. But I want to write for you, too. Because your life is something Egyptians need to think about, and never forget. And you know me, Samir. I will speak politically, and even make clear what, maybe, I was silent about in the last months of your life. Because at the end we disagreed. But I speak to you with the greatest respect; to pick up your soul and carry it further. Because you and all Egyptians deserve that and more.

I remember the years of devastation. You wrote vast poems about the ruin. In your life you neither over-compensated, as if to pretend it wasn’t there, nor bemoaned your fate individually, or that of Egyptians. You were resolute, defiant, satirical, and profound, and in keeping with the great stream of Egyptian existence that used to drop my jaw at its patience, its capacity for suffering, and its trueness. Never once did you lose your dignity, and never once did you make a sign of it either. You understood the nature of the Mubarak years: a frontal attack on the people, for whatever (I would say geopolitical) reasons. You refused in the name of something essential; something revealed in your relations with others, and in your endurance. Because you knew I could see it, we could share silence so easily.

When the uprising first began, I knew you were in the front lines of it. And indeed you were. Virtually every day, long after the many destitute, like yourself, had turned in themselves against the idea of revolution, because it brought no immediate benefit, you were there denouncing authority, and defending the life of the people. They called you “the general” in Tahrir. The youth. And you were shot. They shot your “good leg.” This alone was indication that justice was not yet alive on the national scene, and indeed we know too well it wasn’t. You refused to abandon the youth when they were being gassed and murdered, while others had nothing but words of condemnation for them — thugs, hooligans, whatever they said of them. You never retreated from the harsh edge of the struggle.

But while I loved you entirely, and I know that you understood me, that day, after June 30 (was it July 26?) when you came to my home directly from Tahrir, with a picture of Nasser and a picture of El-Sisi on the same banner… this day hurt me. We didn’t discuss, but for a few seconds. And we didn’t discuss until you died. And while on some levels I understood, this is what I wanted to say to you: the Egyptian people are too grand, too mature, and too decent, for a military state. And so when will something other happen? If it’s not today, will it be tomorrow? The hammer blows you endured in your life — you and millions — had come from that system. Can we say there was a revolution and end up with the same?

You know me and know me well. I’m not talking about patience with what some now call, perhaps correctly, religious fascism. And democracy, to me, is not reducible to elections. I don’t take this understanding, either, from Locke: that it is the right of the people to rise up against tyranny, however it enters the political and national field. For me, it is an ethical right that has nothing to do with political rights. The people have the right to change their minds, and adapt to conditions as they see them. So I deem conservative those who say, “He was elected.” I’m not interested in this argument. We both know the conditions of the country prior to, and around, June 30. The question is: what next?

I remember telling you, I think in April 2011, when likely it was already too late, that the revolutionary forces should seek to establish alliances with the youth of the Islamist movement, because that youth were not necessarily inflexible and unable to bend and to understand that Islam is not — and never was — a rigid, singular system for all time. That Islam expresses some aspects fundamental to human life itself, and as we know, was centuries ahead of its peers — as a system of thinking — when it emerged, at least as understood in terms of the evolution of human thought about how, and by what ethics, we can live together. As I always said, Islam is a social reality. I know you understood this. But you dismissed at this time the notion that the Muslim Brotherhood would gain formal political power, and at that time I understood the point. Everyone honest knows that they did not lead Tahrir in January 2011.

And then we confronted the errors. The fracturing of the revolutionary movement into 200 parties. And the emergence, I would have to say tolerated too much, of old political figures who while they may have spoken out earlier, did not lead the revolution either. The revolution was led by no one. And this, we know, was its strength and the condition of its success. But for none to emerge from those 18 days? This I could not understand. Hadn’t those who took the greatest risks not also, necessarily, made the greatest leaps? This is past history now, but you know I was against the celebration, when, fundamentally, it was a change in command: one we see again gathering now, and all the more sadly, because it is supported by an overwhelming majority.

It was the military state, Samir, that set your life to the stones and to the dirt. It is the military state that will maintain that system, as it managed to do, more or less, throughout the past three years. Because if there had been improvement, perhaps we would be somewhere else. The greatest error being the failure to block the Brotherhood from taking power: a foil enemy that could be — and was easily — dispensed with, while the fundamental lines and architecture of the system that has governed Egypt and Egyptians could be sustained. The faces are unimportant. But when they come from within the same institutions, without any reflection or atonement, it tells you much about what is ahead. The Egyptians have been suppressed as a geopolitical equation for the last 36 years. Nothing on this level has changed.

The question is about sovereignty. Sovereignty of the people, first and foremost. And sovereignty of the army, almost as important. Were it the case! But it isn’t, and so I address you in death because right now I have no alternative. El-Sisi, who you supported in the last months of your life, will win by a landslide. And now the State engages in a frontal battle against the main organized force that pretended to oppose it: the Muslim Brotherhood. I say pretended, and you know what I mean. The Brotherhood rode on the wave of the revolution, to arrive to power. Plain and simple. You didn’t think it could happen, but it did, and the results were always knowable. Because this is a regressive movement. No wonder Washington was okay in supporting it. But I know you know what I will say next: Washington will support any government in Egypt that upholds the geopolitical wager into which the country has been locked for the last 36 years. So there is no surprise. And there is no surprise that Washington maneuvers now to support the military, even though it knows that for all uses and purposes, it was a military coup — a limited one, because in reality the army never gave up complete command of the country; only on the surface, in the election result.

You abhorred Shafiq as you abhorred Mubarak. You were true, always, to the pure aspirations of the Egyptian people that were expressed in the very life of Tahrir Square during the 18 days of the 2011 uprising. What was your argument, and how did you arrive to support the re-imposition of a military regime? A military president. I close my eyes and I try to penetrate my memory. To imagine what you may say. But I know it would come as words, whereas the most important things we shared were without words. This is hard for me now. You lived your life in Bulaq El-Dakrour. While we lived in the city, you represented to me the life of millions. And in particular, a kind of Arab life before the onset of ruin. How did this prison uprising end up in changing the face only of the prison governor, and not installing the people, or a representative of the people?

When I told our mutual friend that I wanted someone to defend you, it was to defend your way of life. You were free, amid the devastation, and you retained throughout your life a terrible and beautiful humor. You remember when I would say that you were 99 percent white and one percent black? We would laugh at the black. We laughed at the endurance of revolution, before the revolution. Or not at, but with. Rene Char, that French poet of life, once wrote: “The color black contains the impossible alive. Its mental field is the seat of all the unexpected, of all paroxysms. Its prestige escorts poets and prepares men of action.” It is indeed in the black, in the irreverence, that perhaps Egypt, and Egyptians, will be saved. But when? He also wrote, and I dedicate this to you: “Leon says mad dogs are beautiful. I believe him.”

I loved you, Samir, with all my soul and I still do, and I have loved the Egyptians equally, because to me they were you, and still are. I want to defend them. In their geopolitical reality. I am not against the army: I am against a style of thinking in the army. I am against the police in all instances, but I can understand a police who defend the sovereignty of the people. It seems to me the revolution still has much to do. I hope you can convey this from where you are, because to me you are still living, whether or not we remember you. I remember you. I am nothing in this land but an observer. But I observed and will continue to defend you.

It would have been a complex conversation without words, but in the right conditions we could have made it. The army command doesn’t need to rule to defend the people. And if the people are primary, defense of the State — albeit a new State — is inherent. What we saw emerge was a class that essentially lived acceptably — in their terms — under the old regime. Such is the impact of a prison regime: I will show you death so you accept fever. But so much more is possible. Indeed, is immediate, but predicated on the full sovereignty of the people.

We have at hand forces that will take as their mandate a popular vote. But this is before the people stood up collectively as a people to assert their sovereignty. How to reach them is the same question as to how to reach you. I can only remind you: the military system was not comfortable. It entailed all the ruin you experienced. Why would it be different now? You are dead now, Samir. But something in you deserves life. It is the sovereignty of the Egyptian people that deserves life. This is not reducible to a poll. It can only be expressed when a full national accounting has been made, and when the army, and the police, are re-forged as defenders of the interests of the people, as they themselves define them, stripped of the pressures of an unequal international division of labor, or a geopolitical scheme that suppresses Arab development.

You know all of this. I am not saying anything you didn’t know. Today is your 40th day, and it is Valentine’s Day. This is the love letter you gave to me, and that I simply read back to you.

On 10 February 2011, in our article “Egypt: Only Democracy is Legitimate,” we tried to seize the characteristics of the then ongoing revolution. Now, a parliament with legislative powers has begun its work. This is the first step for democracy, which should be followed by others. The democratic revolution of 25 January will continue legitimately until a civil democratic welfare state is built. The Arab world needs democracy so that the people can manage their states efficiently and peacefully. It is only through democracy that the state can intervene, not only in creating the best infrastructure for the private and public sector to develop, but also to prevent capital from controlling the state, and to allow the state to direct public resources towards the fair redistribution of revenues.

The new elected parliament in Egypt has the necessary task of changing the failed neoliberal model of a police state governed by a family for the benefits of foreign powers, capital and a comprador class — one that lives not off development but from different kinds of rent — into a democratic welfare state. It is a great task that should be accomplished with tact and with the support and comprehension of all economic actors,including the private sector,so as to avoid chaos or paralysis.

Social justice shouldn’t mean only ensuring the necessary better revenues for all, as this alone would result, among other things, in inflation. It should be simultaneously inciting better and larger production. The first urgent necessity is to attempt to ensure food security in the country. The agriculture and alimentary industry should be intensively and extensively developed. To avoid inflation, aid should be better directed to the producer, so as to incite him to improve his production and not only the product. The same thing applies to other sectors, including construction, transport, energy, health, family, education, jobs, training, the unemployed and the elderly.Aid to the person gives state administration the possibility of distributing revenues according to income, of selecting the products that should be incited to be produced, and to redistribute revenues and augment production without creating inflation and black markets.Deputies should urge the government, specialists and economists to put forward plans so that all families have a revenue, and at the same time that jobs can be created, production increased, monopolies and sources of black markets and corruption suppressed, competitiveness enhanced, the environment protected, administration and public services reformed and the budget balanced by reducing the deficit and public debts through improved commerce and real development. All Arab countries have a high potential for development. They have an abundance of factors of production that could be mobilised individually and collectively. It suffices to be mobilised rationally for the benefit of all, not only the few.

Social justice programmes cannot be achieved but through legitimate, democratic, stable institutions of the state. The base of any democracy is a free individual, woman and man, and a free citizen, woman and man. International human rights standards and treaties should be ratified and applied.

The legislature should ensure that state institutions apply these standards. The state is the state of all Egyptians. Public interest is imperative. Nothing in its laws, structures, procedures, and the behaviour of its agents, should serve — or show any form of discrimination against — any particular individual, group, or ideology, even if initiated by the government in the name of the majority. Special attention should be directed to the physical and moral integrity and dignity of citizens, especially women, minorities and children, to be guaranteed and applied by all state institutions.

Arab regimes are late in the process of democratisation in the world. One of the reasons is the role played by the big powers in supporting non-democratic regimes during their Cold War: for the West, dictatorial comprador regimes; for the East, one-party regimes. While democracy is a system by which society directs its public affairs, the end of the Cold War didn’t end the culture that accompanied it. The pro-Westerns limited their criticism of dictatorial regimes and demand for change by beginning a shy criticism of regimes based on the necessity of individual liberties in individual life without criticising the neoliberal globalised structure and the comprador class enforcing and profiting from it, while the leftists continue to see and think of revolution as a putsch of an avant-garde group establishing the dictatorship of workers and poor peasants as a way to suppress the State: their model is The State and the Revolution of Lenin. American culture is a liberal ideology of less state; the leftists adopted the ideology of one party that leads the state and society. Although world political culture abandoned both neoliberalism and putschism, these two cultures continue to have their avant-gardism in the Arab world.

In Egypt, this is expressed by two positions. The first is the insistence on transferring power to some liberals before any election or constitution. The second is to consider elections as a non-event. Between these, there are reasonable positions held by varied political actors. The first is the position supporting the drafting of a constitution first. Since de Tocqueville’s On Democracy in America, political science knows the danger of a state without recognised values or a constitution that limits the risk of the dictatorship of the majority vote. The constitution is a social pact to live and manage public affairs peacefully together. In a democratic state, non-respect of the constitution in decisions is considered a putsch, even if voted by a majority. The second legitimate position is that it is the elected assembly that should draft the constitution. This position is legitimate because a constitution is not given to the people but written by the people. Although there was the suspicion that religious parties wanted to impose a religious state, agreement on the Al-Azhar Document lifted this suspicion. The third is the position of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), expressed on 23 July, in the constitutional declaration, and in the roadmap for transferring power to an elected president.

The problem with the avant-gardists is that they take their legitimacy from themselves while the only legitimacy in a democratic state is the legitimacy borne from elections. Many things limit even this legitimacy. The first is the constitution, which should contain all kind of limitations to guarantee equality among citizens and prevent the dictatorship of the majority. The legitimacy of the legislative branch is also limited by time. The legislature should be re-elected periodically. Electing a deputy is not giving them the absolute power to decide everything in the life of electors.

It is only delegating to them while keeping the right to pull from them their powers, in the next elections and even before. The third limitation comes from the impossibility for the legislative and executive branches to direct social life in its detail. From this springs the role of the media, expressions of public opinion such as demonstrations, strikes, art, expert research, publications and statements, universities and research centres, freetrade unions, local elections and institutions, and specialised non-governmental associations. The fourth limitation comes from the several other elected bodies: the senate, the president and local administration. Each has its prerogative and legitimacy. The fifth limitation is the institutions of the state and its cultural heritage, because laws even voted will not be enforced efficiently without their acceptance and the possibility that the institutions concerned have faith in them. The opposite is a crisis in the work of the administration that should be addressed.

One problem in the thinking of the avant-gardists is the idea that the revolution is one act to install on the top of the state people that issue revolutionary laws. These laws would have no effect if not supported by the people. Society and the state apparatus and the country’s geopolitical relations make this thinking subjective, impossible to realise and in some aspects dangerous, even if it springs from a real thirst for liberty and progressive aspirations. In Egypt, in their slogans against SCAF, the avant-gardists didn’t present a workable alternative. All society appreciates their role in sparking the January 25 Revolution, but their slogans are seen as harmful, as the elections proved. Happily after one year, most of the youth have abandoned putschism and return to affirming, in group work and outlook, the importance of peaceful change, preparing already for future elections, after the success of the recent elections. No one can deny them this right and appreciated role, or attack it.

In a democratic state no group has a special political privilege. But in all states, democratic or not, the armed forces have a special functioning different from other institutions of the state. In all Third World countries, as in some capitalist countries, the military draft was not only to ensure capacity to face war, but also to develop strategic research and studies, industrial and civil infrastructure, train workers, to administer the public sector and to guarantee enforcement of the law and a civil state. It is to the constitution to decide, calmly and scientifically, the way the army works as an institution of the state, without harming national security and the national economy. In this domain we can say that as Egypt is targeted as a power, despite the absence of a state of war, the army should be prepared to defend national security in all domains of the state. Egypt is not living in a peaceful environment so as to reveal its military plans and budget publicly, although these plans and budget should be inspected and ratified by the deputies of the people.

A heavy responsibility lies on the shoulders of political groups, the elected of the people, and the government of Egypt. The more rapidly and transparently they apply necessary changes, the more the future of Egypt will shine. We are sure the love of the people of Egypt for their country and their confidence in its capacity will make this heavy task easier.

It is “le temps des cerises.”¹ Since Mohamed Bouazizi’s tragic death in Tunisia, the same mechanism of popular uprisings has sparked to life across the Arab world, without exception, with all its pain and hope. The people use the same slogans repeated hundreds of times since a century: liberty, unity, social justice and Palestine is Arab. They failed hundreds of times, and in hundreds of places before, but this time it seems the uprisings reached a level of maturity similar to the cherry in springtime. The Arab Spring is a revolution of democracy.

When we wrote our articles on Tunisia and Egypt, think tanks — even Arab ones — were doubting the sincerity and possible extension of the uprisings to other countries, for the notion of Arab as one nation escaped them, as well as the existing solidarity that mobilises people in the living creatures that are societies. Due to their ideologies, they were surprised that a revolution can be born in the street.

That the Egyptian revolution was born in the street on 25 January does not mean it is merely a conspiracy of some youth who used Facebook. There was an accumulation of struggles and demands spanning years. Workers strikes and sit-ins, political party meetings and campaigns, the protests of professional unions, artists and writers, youth demonstrations, trials, scandals, the refusal to implement judicial decisions, and so on, were for years the events of everyday life in Egypt. Every observer, including the head of the regime, was aware of the growing discontent among Egyptians. But the US and the EU, the Arab oil regimes, the IMF — the “they” opposed to the people — were satisfied as they controlled three strong pillars: the corrupted and corrupting comprador class, the repressive apparatus, and the means of communication, including the party, the newspapers and satellite channels; they didn’t bother with this discontent. Along with the enriching of the comprador elites, there was the deterioration of the living standards of the middle class, the suffering of the poor and the desperation of the youth, regarding the present and the future.

The spontaneity with which all existing currents of the youth joined Tahrir Square on the second day of protest showed that the revolution was not — and would not be allowed to be — governed by specific ideological currents, as well as the lack of need of a leader, individual or organisational, to develop the revolution. These two characteristics of the revolution made it impossible for the regime to suppress the growing masses in Tahrir. No leadership needed to impress, or possible to imprison and decapitate, and no ideology to divide or frighten the youth.

From 28-29 January when the youth defeated the police of the regime until 11 February when the army received the power to lead the state in a transitional period, the revolution became all the people of Egypt in a non-written coalition of forces whose character is anti-dictatorship, anti-corruption and anti-falsification of the people’s will. The first step in a successful revolution has begun: public issues are discussed by the public in public space, in a scene of liberty and general participation that has never been seen before in the Arab world.

Not only legitimate but legal

It is natural in such a scene that thousands of agendas flower, each pretending to be the real revolution, but we can generally distinguish two main currents. One avows stability and order, so as to make the transition successful; the other seeks rapid and deep change, so as to ensure the revolution’s success. Until now both are useful. One prevents the revolution from being a failed adventure. The other prevents the revolution from being merely a changing of faces. The result, as this was conducted through peaceful public dialogue, is that change is achieved through law and without violent clashes. Important decisions for change are taken by enforcing existent legal procedures and institutions. This is one of the characteristics of the Egyptian revolution that distinguishes it from the revolutionary heritage of the past. It is not only through legitimacy that it advances, but through legality too.

Much has been achieved to dismantle and punish the former alliance between political power and the comprador class that stood against the interests of Egypt and the people of Egypt, and all agree that much remains to be done to build a new democratic state by reforming the old one. The constitution, the structure, and the practice of the state should be changed, so that the state can defend public property and resources and at the same time benefit the poor and those on low salaries by adopting a new way of redistributing revenues. Also, so that the state can punish dictatorship and corruption and at the same time prevent the creation of new modes of dictatorship and corruption by democratising decision making and by reinforcing institutions and means of evaluation and control by popular participation. The state should create mechanisms for the protection of civil servants against the arbitrary and the corrupt, an independent system of administrative justice, an independent institution that investigates and evaluates all public spending of all state branches, guarantee the liberty and equal rights of all citizens, men and women, and at the same time enable them to live peacefully together by respecting diversity and the rights of minorities, whether political, religious, cultural or other.

The ongoing public discussions should produce clear programmes for the tasks to be accomplished, and associations to mobilise and organise the people. We believe they should step away from the circle of generalities and ideologies so as to produce coalitions on immediate and mid-term tasks and programmes.

By depending on the people’s interests and will, the Egyptian revolutionaries can lift Egypt from blindly following US imperialist and compromising comprador agents’ diktats and build, both politically and economically, an independent Egypt that bases its policies on the interests of the Egyptian people and on reciprocal benefits with its friends. The imperialist crisis, the failure of liberal and neoliberal globalisation, Egypt’s potential together with Arab solidarity and cooperation, would help in building a strong democratic modern and advanced Egypt in which its people live in prosperity, justice, dignity and freedom.

Parallel tasks of the revolution

Apart from exterior and international policies around which all Egyptians are in agreement, making the security and the interests of Egypt, and international conventions signed by Egypt, the guide for Egyptian foreign policy towards other states and in exterior relations,the deepening of interior changes is the actual role of the revolution. In this domain, from our point of view, there are three parallel tasks before the youth and progressive forces.

First, succeeding in the transitional period through efficient policies and decisions and by enlarging public liberties in order to resist internal and external counter-revolutionary pressures. The alliance between the army, the middle class and the youth should be preserved so that Egypt passes the transitional period without major difficulties, especially in terms of disorder and economic necessities. Differences should be solved through acceptable means of dialogue. The just demands of sectors of the population should be adopted, transformed into means of political organisation of masses, and a progressive programme.

Second, succeeding in the writing of a new constitution to guarantee a civil, democratic and functional modern state that can answer the challenges of liberty, good management and functionality. Progressive forces should avoid black and white clashes regarding the identity of the state. Egypt is an Arab-Muslim country whether it is stipulated in the constitution or not. This appurtenance is neither religious nor ethnic, but cultural and geopolitical. Giving the right to decide the legitimacy of laws to any persons other than the representatives of the people and the apparatus of the democratic state creates unnecessary divisions, threatens the principles of peaceful coexistence, establishes a non-elected elite model of the state, and would block the adaptation of Egypt to the new realities of society. Therefore, refusing Article 2 of the 1971 Constitution is just, but it is necessary to avoid a clash on this issue, pushed by reactionary Islamist or Coptic extremists, framed on identity. We would suggest a formula to this end: Laws are decided by the people, inspired by Islamic fiqh (jurisprudence), international laws and conventions, and values of peace, equality of citizens, tolerance and justice for all.

Third, we believe in any country transitioning from dictatorship to democracy the essential issue in the constitutional battle should be directed towards preventing corruption, preventing marginalisation of minorities, preventing repression, and developing the state to be a welfare state that is responsible for, among other tasks, delivering and developing public services in education, health, justice and equality, transport and communications, energy, electricity, water, money and exchange, measures and qualifications, preserving and recovering heritage, material and cultural development, and just revenues to all. Regarding the tasks of the state, the most important are: the administration of public riches and the national economy, the security of citizens and the territorial integrity of the land, the justice and the liberty of citizens, communities and groups.These should be accomplished by the institutions of the state with transparency, efficiency and democratically. The mechanisms to guarantee these should be clearly embedded in the constitution.

Much could be said about profiting from the past constitutional experiences of Egypt and other countries. We mention some urgent points:

The state is the state of all Egyptians. Public interest is imperative. Nothing in its laws, structures, procedures, and the behaviour of its agents should serve — or show any form of discrimination against — any particular individual, group, or ideology, even if initiated by the government.

Justice and enforcement of law should be independent. No individual or group has the right to enforce his own idea of justice. Only the state and its policies and decisions of justice can be enforced. Armed gangs and militias should be forbidden, and political and religious violence outlawed.

Developing the civil modern state

The development of Egypt will be solid and effectual if its aim and practice is to develop all its regions and mobilise all its resources. Solidarity between the capable and the weak, between generations, between rich regions and poor ones, is not only a moral obligation but is also an economic factor for an efficient economy. Enlarging the internal market and local production, both in agriculture and industry, mobilising all national resources, the recovery of the capacity of creation, initiative and production, as well as social peace, pass through this solidarity.

A modern state develops local elected institutions through decentralisation and democracy while preserving the unity of the state and its control and by being cautious not to create local feudalism through rights and funding. Local institutions weaken bureaucracy, oversee state actions, increase the people’s participation in public life, and are a school of political leadership. To increase participation, and accordingly the participation of all, we suggest a proportional system in local elections, and to fund local institutions via just and non-discriminating rules of funding in the budget.

The liberty of association in non-profit civil society organisations, in whatever domain and without arbitrary state interference, is necessary for modern societies to promote the legal activity and actions of its members. Only financing and finances are monitored by the state, to avoid their use for activities outside their declared purposes.

Discrimination in appointing, seconding and upgrading civil servants should be abolished in order to ensure that the right women or men are in the right place, and to combat corruption and the corrupting. Wherever possible, appointments should result from anonymous written examination, or be based on educational attainment and certificates. Civil servants should act according to the public interest, avoiding conflicts of interest, abuse of power, and serving any particular interest. Trade unions should defend civil servants and participate in matters concerning them individually or collectively. A system of administrative justice should be developed to make institutions work correctly. The regime that was and remains the target of the revolution is more than the sum of its persons. It is also an ensemble of administrative practices that in their everyday function constitute an apparatus that must be addressed by new democratic procedures and technical competence.

As for the choice of a parliamentary or presidential system, we believe Egyptians should decide on this question, including by looking at the experience of other countries. A fragmented parliament without a clear majority undermines the possibility of stability and long-term policies. A president with sweeping power ends up personalising the state. We suggest a combination between a majority two-stage mode of elections for parliament, two houses of parliament, the protection of the minority in parliament to prevent a dictatorship of the majority within it, the independence of the judicial branch, especially the constitutional council, the state council, an independent institution that investigates all public spending of all state branches, the independence of local powers, civil society, trade unions, media, specialists, and liberties of communication so as to monitor and prevent the government from using state institutions incorrectly. The president is the representative of all the people and the guide of all institutions. He has the right to stop unconstitutional actions and take his decisions with the aid of state institutions.

The role of trade unions is primordial in social change. Its weapon is the strike, but its policies are different under savage capitalism or in a welfare state. In a welfare state, trade unions should be integrated in decision making in all institutions — this is their way for developing the interests of their members, the economy, and how via the acceptance of efficient policies these could be achieved. Their weapon should be dialogue and negotiations, and strike as a last arm when demands are essential.

Equality of opportunity in funding political groups makes for a healthy democracy. The state should ensure that no outside agendas control national currents, but at the same time open up local and state funding and media to all groups.

A new model of revolution

Discussion on the constitution will continue as intellectual speculation if the coalition that made the revolution — the youth, the middle class and the army — does not continue as a coalition. The revolution would not win the elections and so realise a programme of change. The counter-revolution, although defeated politically, has the force of the statue quo ante and is capable of changing its skin in order to prevent the building of a civil democratic state. The forces of change have the ability of winning if a clear coalition is made, if conviction is maintained, and if ideological slogans are refused; this combined with a clear mid-term programme that can mobilise the people for change. Analysis of the constitutional amendments referendum shows it is possible. The 30 per cent that voted No could easily be turned into 60 per cent if it is well guided by a programme for calm, non-violent necessary change. Beginning a revolution is a matter of will. Succeeding in it is a science.

The Egyptian revolution heralded a new kind of revolution that is adapted to a large country of 85 million in the Third World in the 21st century. Its social forces by consciousness or necessity forced all revolutionaries of the world to re-examine their ideas of revolution because of what is accomplished: a large bloc without leadership enter in coalition to change the regime without using armed violence and to build a new state through legal procedures. The future tasks should be accomplished through the same maturity and spirit in order to not endanger the revolution or Egypt, for it is evident that the counter-revolution, internal and external, counts on divisions, chaos and economic difficulties to raise its head.

Beautiful are the rivers of people in the streets of Egypt. The Arab Spring of democracy has already brought to flower new practices of liberty in public space. The heroic, resolute, peaceful youth has offered more than 300 martyrs from among their ranks to secure for all Egyptians freedoms they themselves lacked. Standing firm in the face of lethal force, the martyrs de-legitimise the police state both legally and politically. In each place that they fell grows a seed of the future. The authority of the stick has been broken.

It is no longer respected to give orders.

The revolt begun by the Facebook youth on 25 January became a revolt of all the youth on 26 January, and a revolt of all society three days later. An unwritten social programme is agreed upon and embraced by all: building a sovereign democratic welfare state.

When we drafted our article “The Arab Spring of democracy” (Ahram Online, 18 January 2011), sensing an imminent Arab revolt, for various reasons we had Egypt in our minds. Egypt is the heart of the Arab world, the largest Arab state and the most advanced in many domains. While Tunisia and Egypt have common traits, they also have differences; Egypt was and remains the Arab state essential to facing Israel, with which it was at war on several occasions, resulting in a popular army and institutions of an army that are respected by its people.

We heard the 25 January call for protest and we saw the success of its mobilisation. Since then we decided not to write, aware that the Egyptian movements themselves would decide the success of their revolution. As we said in our previous article, this revolution is different: it heralds a new kind of revolution in Arab and Third World countries.

Already, many articles have been written about the Egyptian revolution. The majority have employed either non-applicable criterion taken from other revolutions to understand its nature and to portray it, or have attempted to hijack it or to give lessons to the Egyptian people. This revolution has its own dynamics, but it also sheds light on the wider Arab revolution.

Its first significance is that it is a pacific revolution. Neither theoretically nor practically do the Egyptian people advocate for the use of violence to achieve political ends. There are no traces of the rhetoric of civil war, armed insurrection or appeals to use force. On the contrary, it is the counter-revolution, orchestrated by the state, which has resorted to violence and intimidation, and which failed to break the revolt. The people stand united with the army, knowing that the sons of Egypt, conscripted from every family, defend Egyptians and not a regime. Meanwhile, the pacifism of the youth doesn’t mean that it does not defend itself and its revolution and peoples rights against the violence and provocations of the state. The more the state used violence, the more the youth stood resolute and the ranks of the demonstrations grew and spread to all sections of society.

Its second significance is that contrary to the leftist literature advocating a policy of tabula rasa in order for revolution to succeed, the revolutionary Egyptian youth is proud of its history, its country and state, including its army. What we hear in their slogans, literature and discussions is a call to change the state into a democratic welfare state, rather than to destroy the state apparatus and its institutions. Many factors lead to this equation. The first resides in the extent and complication of the modern state’s role in everyday life. Second, Egyptians are aware that the intertwinement of international trade with the national economy would make the isolation of Egypt for a long period of time an economic disaster. All also know the necessity of standing ready to defend the country against potential external aggression, Israeli or any other.

The third significance of this revolution resides in the absence of a culture of avant-gardism. We do not mean that there are no groups and individuals who paved the way for this revolt by their actions on the cultural scene. But none of them advocate for a putsch to reach power and implement what they would believe is the best for the people.

One reason for this leaderless phenomenon is linked to the impossibility of constituting a singular avant-garde under the regime’s repressive policies, and the ease any attempt would offer to power in decapitating this “leadership”. This difficulty of having an avant-garde turned into an advantage as the revolution became easily adopted as their own by all sections of the population. The longer it has remained leaderless, the more exposed has been the total confrontation between the people and the regime.

We are impressed by the largeness and spontaneity of the participation, whether in numbers, classes, genders, or political sympathies, while those who called for 25 January were few. Their demands have proven to be the demands of all the people. Through practical and realistic slogans, understandable by anyone, they demand real democracy and social justice. Through this process, the Egyptian people accomplished — with neither avant-gardism nor ideology, nor a large organisation — a collective thinking and carried forward actions that equate to a whole people in revolt.

We now know that in Egypt the two pillars of what we call the Third World state in a globalised world, based on a police state and a comprador class allied to international capital, has failed or at least lost all legitimacy. What will be built in the future, we think, depends on the consciousness of the Egyptian national movement and its determinations. The past 16 days proved the high consciousness and political maturity of the people. Already the potential divisions between secular and religious, Muslims and Christians, nationalists, leftists and Islamists, the poor and the middle class have instead, in unity, become the movement’s strength in diversity. The attempt by the counter-revolution to use force and to incite violence and divisions among the people has failed totally and will fail as long as the revolution adheres to its nature. The attempt to divide and conquer by alleging that this or that group is trying to take over is faced by the insistence of the movement, in its slogans and practice, that they don’t want to jump on the back of power. On the contrary, they insist that democracy and freedom should be for all.

The democratic change in Egypt frightens all in the West, and especially Israel. This alarm does not come from a threat of direct economic or military confrontation, but rather from the waking of the Arab world and the results implied by Arabs having a democratic state that defends the interests of the people. If Egypt becomes democratic, Israel loses the dream of dividing the Arabs in order to control them. It would also break the myth that Israel is the only state in the region capable of democracy. No wonder Israel regrets the collapse of the old structure, though it can do nothing about it. The Egyptians opened their mouths. This will be an ever-evolving phenomenon of expression and quest for their rights.

Apart from defending Egypt’s security, rights, and the culture of Arab solidarity, no current from within the revolutionary movement expresses a tendency to wage war against anyone. The Egyptians do not pretend that they will change the world order. They express the necessity of having relations according to mutual benefits. They do not lay claims to lead the Arab world either, though they know the importance of Egypt in the Arab world. No one thinks that terrorism will produce change or that without the state (as defended by leftist revolutionaries) and its institutions Egypt can defend its own people and land, or even this revolution.

Many different rumours are being spread in various quarters, alternatively saying that Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, or even the Americans are behind this revolution. Their purpose is to make the Arabs lose confidence in their own capacity and unity in change. Some, including Khamenei, tried to say it is Iran’s influence and example that touched the Egyptians, including exaggerating the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the revolution. It is true that the Iranian revolution was popular, but it resulted in a religious oppressive state, in spite of being anti-imperialist. The Egyptian revolt is for a democratic state not a religious oppressive state. Many Egyptians consider the appeal to use violence and religion propaganda in speaking of their revolution as serving the counter-revolution.

While the Egyptians in their literature consider the Muslim Brothers as one of the national groups, the majority in Egypt — as is made clear from the people participating in this uprising, their slogans and their expressions — are opposed to the concept of a religious state and to the use of violence. The reasons that the Egyptian revolution does not herald a religious state are multiple, including the specificity of Egyptian Islam, which in general is not directly political, the largeness of the secular middle class, the aspirations of the youth for increased individual liberties, the animosity of the army towards a religious state, coming from past confrontations, cultural competition in matters of democracy due to Egypt’s geographic belonging to the Mediterranean basin, and its economic reliance on being an attractive tourist venue. Even the Muslim Brothers themselves declared that they participate with others and do not encompass this uprising of the people.

Whatever is the immediate outcome on political power and its structures, the Egyptian revolution has already imposed the liberty of expression in society, imposed the necessity that change for all should go in the direction of defending sovereignty, public property and riches, and to use the state to realise social justice and solidarity. This is an expression of a deep culture in Arab countries and its principle of solidarity. Solidarity expressed in the terms “We love Egypt and we protect it” is in modern political thinking called the welfare state.

No one can know the immediate pace and the extent of change, for there are many trends in the state apparatus and many trends in the revolutionary movement. But all know there will be no viable power if they don’t work towards a welfare state. The ignorance of Western think tanks hoping that a police state with a comprador class can repress the will of the people indefinitely is well portrayed by their surprise when this state model could only resist three days in the face of a popular uprising.

In their analysis of the situation, some Western sympathisers with Egyptians share the same ignorance of the Egyptian situation and the conditions for 21st century revolutions as they apply a culture dating back to the 19th century. Although they accept the May 1968 principles of ecology, human rights, freedom of expression and individual liberties as normal in the West, they apply to Arab revolutions a kind of putschist conception of the revolution, and worry from the beginning of the Egyptian revolt about the lack of identified avant-garde leaders.

Egypt is a developing country but it is a modern country whose youth, which constitutes 60 per cent of the population, is as educated as their counterparts in Western countries. It is certain that there is large poverty and class differences in Egypt, but the middle class is as large as in Europe and suffers in the current neoliberal globalisation-driven financial crisis from the same deteriorating conditions while aspiring to the same opportunities and freedoms.

The difficulty for the Egyptian movement resides in how to navigate the change from a failed comprador state to a welfare state, while refraining from destroying the economy and state institutions. All are conscious that if they destroy the economy there will be no opportunity for building a welfare state. They defend change accepted by all walks of life and sections of society, through conviction and consensus. Time and balance of forces work for the revolution. The Arab Spring of democracy was born when all public affairs began being discussed in public.

The persistent insistence on the departure or non-departure of President Hosni Mubarak by Western media is staged to judge if the revolution has succeeded or not. This is a way to drain the revolution of its real content, wherein they gained what they wanted and their demands are already accepted by all, including the collapse of the concept of inheritance of power and the de-legitimisation of the continuity of the same structure and policies of the state. If protesters continue to speak of Hosni Mubarak’s departure it is not his person that is important, but rather the symbolic guarantee that things change.

Only Egyptians can decide what they accept or not. This is one of the grandeurs of the Egyptian revolution, because it follows its own dynamics without influence from obsolete examples. If the French produced the French Revolution of 1789 and the Commune of 1870, and became the example for revolutionary literature, and the Russians produced the October 1917 Revolution, the Arabs will give to the world and the Third World the example of the first half of the 21st century, by its pacifism, anti-avant-gardism, anti-neoliberal globalisation, and defence of the welfare state, national dignity and sovereignty.