Fifty years ago on Tuesday a group of nationalist military officers seized power in Egypt, overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a republican regime that lasts to the present day.
A half-century and four presidents — all military officers — later, Egyptians still argue as to whether or not the so-called July Revolution was the first step on a glorious road forward, a broken promise, or a dead end.
The state’s policies have shifted dramatically over the past five decades.
Egypt’s first president, the fatherly Mohammed Neguib, was ousted in 1954 in an internal power struggle.
He was succeeded by the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, who presided over the nationalisation of the Suez Canal and private industry, as well as the creation of a one-party state and military defeat by Israel in 1967.
Anwar Sadat however launched a “corrective revolution” after Nasser’s death in 1970, which ultimately led to a mixed economy, a strategic partnership with the United States, and a restricted multi-party system.
Hosni Mubarak, president since 1981, has overseen a continuation of economic reforms and the creation of new political parties, although many sectors of the economy remain state monopolies and opposition political activity is tightly controlled.
Nasser’s anti-colonialism and socialism may have been necessary, some argue, at a time when Egypt was still occupied by British troops and riven with deep splits between rich and poor.
Egypt has promised a full year of celebrations to mark the Egyptian republic’s golden anniversary, kicking off with a speech by President Mubarak and continuing with a series of seminars, concerts, and other events.
“The revolution saved the nation on the brink of anarchy, (due to) destructive divisions resulting from the abandonment of the national struggle,” Mubarak said in last year’s speech marking the July 23 anniversary.
However, Mubarak said, the “people of Egypt … allowed themselves the freedom of movement and initiative to rectify the path of the revolution whenever necessary.”
To others, including those who dub themselves “Nasserists”, the policies pursued after Nasser’s death abandoned the revolution’s aspirations for social equality, while maintaining its undemocratic ways.
“The regime is celebrating 50 years of itself, not of the July revolution … The July revolution ended in 1970” with the death of Nasser, says writer Ibrahim Issa.
Makram Mohammed Ahmed, editor of the state-owned Al-Musawwar weekly, argues however that Mubarak is beginning to shift the government’s basis of rule from revolutionary legitimacy, to a new legitimacy based on the rule of law.
Ahmed hailed in particular a 2000 court ruling giving the judiciary the power to fully supervise parliamentary elections “as a change in the relationship between the people and the state.”
For Egypt’s Islamists, who still suffer periodic crackdowns, that change might be hard to discern.
Essam Eddin al-Erian, a doctor in the Muslim Brothers who was imprisoned from 1995 to 2000 on charges of illegal political activity, says: “No regime since 1952 has had legitimacy …
“There is no legitimacy other than that obtained from the consent of the people (through) free and fair elections.”
For Hisham Kassem, president of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, July 1952 derailed a flawed parliamentary system that could have evolved into a functioning multi-party democracy.
“The British and the palace manipulated elections, but at least you had rotation of power,” Kassem says. “It would have developed. Instead, we ended up with (government) that has no accountability.”
For some, the years following the July revolution offer a tantalising glimpse of a different course that Egyptians might have taken.
Several years ago, leftist historian Salah Eissa discovered a copy of a provisional 1954 constitution, drafted at the officers’ request and “heavily influenced by (international) declarations of human rights.”
Had the officers adopted the document, Eissa says, “maybe the July 23 revolution would have taken a different path.”
Instead, the document ended up in a cardboard box in the basement of an Arab League office, Eissa wrote in a recently-published book, “Constitution in the Garbage Bin.”
Nonetheless, Eissa says, the 1952 revolution still merits commemoration.
Like the French revolution, Egypt’s revolution resulted in “terror and prisons,” Eissa says, but it “changed Egyptian history and the history of the Arabs, and affected the history of the world.” – AFP