Whither Egypt: Regime Change or a Return to the Status Quo?

Abstract

On January, 25, 2011, ironically, a holiday established only a few years earlier to celebrate the role that Egyptian police had played in 1952 in resisting the British occupation of the country, tens of thousands assembled in Tahrir Square not to honor the police but to protest their role in keeping Hosni Mubarak and his National Democratic Party (NDP) in power. Mubarak had become president of the Arab Republic of Egypt in October 1981 following the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat. Using the power of Egypt’s large and well-armed security forces to suppress dissent, relying on the extra-judicial powers that emergency laws gave the state to imprison without trial, and rigging elections, Mubarak had remained in office for 30 years. In the presidential and parliamentary elections held in 2005, opponents had joined forces to oppose the president and his party. Their efforts failed and led to despair. Mubarak won a fifth term as president, and his NDP retained its solid majority in Egypt’s two parliamentary houses. New parliamentary elections, held in 2010, had been shamelessly rigged, and Mubarak, despite his age (82 years) and deteriorating health, seemed poised to run for a sixth five-year term as president. But on this occasion, despair gave way to courage and determination. The watchword in the 2005 campaign had been kifaya (enough in Arabic), and indeed, six years later, thousands, perhaps even millions of Egyptians all across the country linked arms, determined to claim a new political future for their country.