In Egypt, all eyes are turned toward the military institution in light of the great division between the authority and the citizens. In this context, regardless of the nature of the power experience between the street and the authority and the nature of the demands raised by the protestors, the results will remain linked to the position of the military institution and its vision for the solution. The issue at this level is not just related to the fact that the latter institution has been the pillar of the authority in Egypt for over half a century or that it holds power on the field. It is mainly related to the fact that it is an economic power with branched out interests throughout the community, thus rendering it a social category with interests exceeding the ideological positions expressed by the civilian parties and the licenses and prohibited popular committees. One can even say that on the political level, there are only two powers with actual and decisive influence in determining the direction and outcome of the protests, and they are the Muslim Brotherhood and the military institution. However, this does not necessarily mean that the decisive battle will be between those two, but that each of them enjoys a major impact at the level of the developments for the time being. The main players are limited to the military institution and the Muslim Brotherhood due to the absence of a political faction that was formed based on joint interests between its members and featuring a productive economic chain that is organically linked to societal structure. Indeed, except for a few industries and the farms of the rich, the Egyptian state is considered to be the primary and main employer in the country, despite what this means in terms of the attempts to monopolize the political expression of those working for it, especially by the ruling party during the past stages. In its employment of this rising number of people, the state relies on a rentier economy that is directly based on foreign aid and tourism, the two sectors from which various sorts of corruption are carried out. As for the so-called businessmen sector in Egypt, it is the expression of this rentier economy that is only interested in rapid gains, outside the context of the economic cycle that enjoys a cumulative nature. And instead of seeing the public sectors give an opportunity to the revival of this cycle and the refunding of the state, they became the object of an organized pillaging of public funds in the context of a clientelist relationship between the decision makers and the “fat cats.” And just like privatization, the aid which amounts to billions was not reflected in programs to rehabilitate the economy in a way that would provide job opportunities to the hundreds of thousands of people who enter the working market every year. Instead, some of the aid which is allocated to civilian programs went to the pockets of some businessmen, thus rendering the poor even poorer and the rich much richer. Consequently, when the popular demonstrations seemed to be heading toward the imposition of additional concessions on the authority, reports started circulating about the escape of businessmen which were still until only yesterday holding on to the authority. This reveals that this faction of businessmen was parasitical and living off the authority, without any organic connection with civil society. In parallel, the official opposition parties with their different formations were unable to achieve a breakthrough at the level of this authority because their survival depends on the small margin offered to them by the latter. But it is also because they cannot express the wishes of this civil society which, although the Muslim Brotherhood was able to mobilize parts of it based on an ideological foundation in the past, seems to be lacking any efficient leadership that could represent an alternative. As for the current political maneuvers, they convey the absence of a cohesive civilian power, thus maintaining everyone's hopes in the military institution. However, sooner or later, this hope will be obstructed by the same old reality, especially if it were to end with a settlement that would reassign this institution to exit the current predicament, as it can now be sensed on the horizon.
