هل يمكن للعلمانيين استعادة الثورة في الوقت الذي يوطد فيه الإ

هل يمكن للعلمانيين استعادة الثورة في الوقت الذي يوطد فيه الإسلاميون سلطتهم
21 سبتمبر 2012

في مقال بمجلة “تايم” يقول الكاتب إن العلمانيين والليبراليين الذين ساهموا في الإطاحة بدكتاتورية مبارك تم تهميشهم من قبل جماعة الإخوان المسلمين، ويتساءل هل يمكن لهم الفوز في معركة السلطة.

وتضيف المجلة أن الـ18 شهرا التي أعقبت الثورة لم تكن مواتية للقوى السياسية العلمانية التي أفل نجمها سريعا بعد أن كانت تتصدر الانتفاضة الشعبية الناجحة في العام الماضي، وهيمن الإسلاميون على البرلمان بفضل شبكاتهم الاجتماعية.

ويرى الكاتب أن انتخابات الرئاسة كانت كارثة أفدح حين انقسم معسكر الثورة من غير الإسلاميين بين أكثر من مرشح، فجاءت جولة الإعادة بين مرشح جماعة الإخوان وشفيق الممنتمي لنظام مبارك، وظل الثوار العلمانيون يراقبون دون إمكانية التأثير معركة الإخوان والمجلس العسكري آملين دون جدوى في سيناريو يؤدي لخسارة الطرفين الأخيرين.

وتقول المجلة إن مصر تقف الآن عند مفترق الطرق، حيث توطدت سلطة الرئيس مرسي بعد مناورته تجاه المجلس العسكري وإحالته المشير طنطاوي رئيس المجلس للتقاعد، في الوقت الذي تقترب فيه الانتخابات البرلمانية التي سيحدد موعدها أوان الانتهاء من صياغة الدستور الجديد.

وتتساءل المجلة عما إذا كانت المعارضة العلمانية سيكون لديها الوقت الكافي لخوض المعركة البرلمانية بشكل مؤثر، وأن تتعلم من أخطائها التكتيكية والتنظيمية عبر الشهور الماضية.

تشير المجلة إلى أن الصحافة المصرية تعج بأنباء يومية عن تحالفات للأحزاب العلمانية كالحزب المصري الديمقراطي الاجتماعي وحزب المصريين الأحرار، وإلى تأسيس البرادعي لحزب الدستور كطرف سياسي جديد.

وتشير المجلة كذلك لدعوات المرشحين الرئاسيين السابقين – حمدين صباحي وعمرو موسى – لإنشاء تحالفات لخوض الانتخابات البرلمانية، بينما على الأرجح أن يشكل مرشح رئاسي آخر – عبد المنعم أبو الفتوح الإسلامي الأكثر انفتاحا – كتلة انتخابية أخرى مع أحزاب وقوى إسلامية وسطية.

وتنقل كذلك عن سياسين صعوبة خوض المعركة في مواجهة التشكيل الإسلامي الإخواني السلفي الذي حصل على ما يقرب من 75% من المقاعد في مجلس الشعب المنحل، وعلى الأخص بشأن تمويل الحملات الانتخابية، مؤكدين تلقي جماعة الإخوان دعما خارجيا من قطر والسعودية، يضاف إلى مواردها في الداخل.

وتنقل المجلة عن قيادي بالحزب المصري الديمقراطي استقبال الحزب لوفود من أحزاب اشتراكية ديمقراطية من الدنمارك وانجلترا ستقوم بعقد دورات تدريبية لنقل خبرتها في بناء المنظمات الجماهيرية.

وتشير التايم إلى نوع آخر من المعارضة العلمانية – مؤيدي شفيق والمجلس العسكري – الذين يكرهون جماعة الإخوان والذين لا يثقون أيضا في معظم القوى السياسية العلمانية المنتمية للثورة، وإلى احتجاجات نظمها بعضهم في 24 أغسطس الماضي ضد جماعة الإخوان أمام قصر الرئاسة، وإلى اعتقادهم أن مرسي اقتنص كرسي الرئاسة بمساعدة أمريكية، وأن شفيق كان الفائز الفعلي.

ويرى الكاتب أن عودة شفيق – المقيم في دبي الآن ويواجه اتهامات رسمية بالفساد – أو حتى تشكيله حزبا من (منفاه) يمكنه رغم كل ذلك من أن يقتنص قدرا مذهلا من طاقة احتجاج رجعية سترعاها بقايا نظام مبارك.

وتقول المجلة إن الطرفين الأخيرين يواجهان عدوا مشتركا، إلا أن مؤيدي شفيق (العلمانيين) يرون الثوار (العلمانيين) مجرد فوضويين متطرفين، والأخيرون يرونهم كأنصار للثورة المضادة، وأن بعض السياسيين دعوا لتحالف بينهما، بينما يرى مراقبون آخرون أنه أمر من المستحيل تخيله، وأن هناك انعدام كامل للثقة بينهما.

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المقال الكامل المنشور على موقع مجلة “تايم” بتاريخ 4 سبتمبر 2012
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[/?center][center]As Egypt’s Islamists Cement Their Rule, Can Secularists Reclaim the Revolution

It has not been a very good 18 months for Egypt’s secular revolutionary political forces. After standing at the forefront of an unprecedented and triumphant popular uprising last year, which led to the ousting of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, their star rapidly dimmed. In the wake of the revolution, Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the even-more-conservative Salafists used their existing grassroots networks to dominate parliamentary elections last winter while post-revolutionary secular parties struggled to catch up. Presidential elections earlier this summer were an even bigger disaster: the non-Brotherhood pro-revolution camp divisively split itself between multiple candidates, producing a thoroughly Mubarak-era runoff choice between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy and Mubarak’s former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq representing the military-backed deep state.

“What happened in the presidential election was a wakeup call to a lot of the players,” says Hussein Gohar, head of foreign affairs for the Social Democrat Party, one of the main post-revolutionary secularist parties. “People panicked after Morsy became president and they’re still panicking.”

(MORE: Egypt’s Morsy Urges Iran to Help End Syrian Crisis)

The Morsy-Shafiq choice left most of the secular revolutionaries out in the cold and thoroughly depressed. For the past several months, they have watched from the sidelines as Morsy and the Brotherhood faced off against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or SCAF—impotently hoping for a scenario where both sides lost.

Now Egypt faces a new crossroads. Morsy is firmly entrenched in the presidential palace; his power struggle with the military ended rather abruptly last month when he succeeded in outmaneuvering the SCAF—sending Mubarak-era Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi and his loyalists into early retirement. Most importantly, there’s a new parliamentary election looming after the previous parliament was dissolved via court order on a technicality. The exact timing of the new elections is uncertain; it’s tied to the ratification of a new constitution, which is still being drafted. Gohar said he expects the elections to come “any time between December and March.”

All of which begs the question: does Egypt’s secular opposition have enough time to make an impact this time around and can they learn from their tactical and organizational mistakes of the previous 18 months?

The looming deadline has touched off a flurry of political activity. The local press is now filled with daily updates on coalition negotiations between a host of post-revolutionary secular parties such as the Social Democrats and the Free Egyptian Party. This week a new political player emerged in the form of former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei, who officially launched his own Constitution Party.

(MORE: Shades of Mubarak: Egyptian Journalists Chafe Under Media Controls)

“They’re just starting to realize that [elections] are fast approaching,” said secularist writer and analyst Bassem Sabry. “Everyone wants to get into some alliance or another. It’s a question of how and who approaches who and who’s in charge.”

Veteran socialist politician Hamdin Sabbahi–who finished a surprisingly strong third place in the presidential vote—is being courted by multiple parties to join forces. And longtime Egyptian diplomat Amr Moussa, despite a weak fifth place presidential showing, “remains a towering figure” on the secular scene and is being similarly courted, according to Sabry.

Fourth place finisher Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood official who fashioned himself as a progressive Islamist and an alternative to the Brotherhood, has so far remained distant from the more secular negotiations and is expected to form his own electoral bloc along with other centrist Islamist forces.

“The future of the Egyptian left is not as bleak as people think,” said Wael Nawara, a longtime progressive activist and a member of the Constitution Party. But Nawara acknowledges that whatever secular coalition emerges for the new parliamentary elections will still face an uphill battle to crack the combined Brotherhood-Salafist bloc that captured nearly 75 percent of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.

“Financing, for starters, will be an issue. This is an area where the Muslim Brothers already have an advantage,” Nawara said. In addition to their own homegrown financing from disciplined loyalists, the Islamists are widely presumed to be benefiting from a river of overseas funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

(MORE: 5 Things the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Countercoup’ Tells Us About Egypt)

“These other parties will just have to rely on local donations—which is just not something people are used to here. They’re at a disadvantage,” Nawara said. There’s also a steep learning curve to be overcome on how to build the kind of grassroots mobilization machine that the Brotherhood spent decades crafting. To help speed that process, Gohar, the Social Democrat official, has turned to his European counterparts for help. A delegation from the Danish Social Democrat Party arrives in mid-September to conduct what Gohar calls “Democracy 101” training sessions, and the British Labor Party is planning to conduct similar training here.

There is, of course, a completely separate secularist opposition to Morsy that has been recently making its presence felt—the pro-military/pro-Shafiq crowd that viscerally hates the Brotherhood, but also deeply distrusts most of the secular revolutionaries.

On August 24, around 2000 people staged a defiant and decidedly angry protest outside the presidential palace, openly calling for a new revolution to purge the Brotherhood from power. The protest was most notable for the sense of pure paranoid rage coursing through the crowd. Several protesters told me that Morsy had stolen the presidential elections with the help of the U.S. government and the biased media. Two different television camera crews were attacked by the protesters.

“I’m here to bring down the Brotherhood. Their presence is illegitimate,” shouted Farida Mansour, a mid-50’s homemaker and one of many women there who wore the tradition Islamic hijab covering her hair. “Ahmed Shafiq won the election. Everybody knows that!”

Shafiq has been overseas, mostly in Dubai, since losing the election; Egyptian prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest at the end of the last month on corruption charges if he returns. But he remains a polarizing force and focal point for the free-floating anti-Brotherhood anger that simmers in some corners of Egypt’s secular society. If he were to return, or even if he forms a party from de facto exile, it could capture a surprising amount of reactionary protest momentum, buoyed by support from the vestiges of the old Mubarak regime.

Put simply, the pro-Shafiq secularist opposition regards the more revolutionary contingent as dangerous radical hippies, while the revolutionary crowd regards the Shafiq supporters as retrograde counter-revolutionaries who seek to dial back the clock to the Mubarak era. They both share a common enemy, and some politicians have spoken of forging an alliance between the two camps, but other observers find that impossible to imagine. “There are those who are angry and want things to go back to the way they were. For these people Shafiq and company are a natural solution,” says Sabry. “The progressive bloc is unable to reach out to that crowd. There’s too much distrust on both sides.”