In August, the Egyptian military reintroduced the state of emergency which had kept [former President] Mubarak in power for over three decades – and the largest Arab state slid back from the promising hope of Tahrir Square. The Egyptian military controls up to 60 per cent of the country’s economy – so any meaningful attempt at democracy would involve curtailing this ‘army-corporation’ – but presently at least half of all Egyptians appear to want exactly the opposite of this. Without taking this into consideration, any civilian government is largely a front.
From the start, I have remained dubious about what outcome would emerge from revolutionary fervour. Steady, gradual change is a more reliable indicator of the direction a country is moving in than rapid, revolutionary change: full of passion and fire but muddled and often uniting very disparate voices for a brief period, only to see that unity subsequently dissolve into intra-civil conflict.
