There is some contradiction between what Tahrir Square, in the center of Cairo, witnessed last Friday, and the results of the legislative elections in Egypt. Indeed, the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the one year anniversary of the start of the movement demanding the departure of the regime did not come to celebrate the victory that led to the Islamists obtaining the absolute majority in the People's Assembly. Rather, they came to continue pushing to achieve demands they have been raising since January 25 of last year. These demands are connected to the necessity of establishing a secular system as soon as possible, and building a secular democratic state. And if no objections have yet been heard to the great electoral victory achieved by the Islamists, the latter have begun to fit perfectly into the roadmap drawn by the Supreme Military Council, especially after the elections – which indicates that they were able to win as they did within the framework of such a roadmap, and therefore that they took advantage of the power structure that has been ruling since the departure of former President Hosni Mubarak. While civil society organizations, liberal formations and groups with a secularist tendency all agree on the necessity for the Military Council to quickly hand over power to civilians, with some of them demanding that the Military Council be prosecuted on charges of committing acts of repression against protesters, Islamists of different strands approve of the Council's management and declare their support for the timetable it has laid out for the transition of power. We thus stand before two different assessments of the nature of the current power structure embodied in the Military Council – which has assumed the authority of the President according to the current constitution – and of the nature of what has been achieved so far in Egypt. And while the Islamists consider themselves to have become part of the parliamentary branch of government, at least so far; in the absence of parliamentary opposition that could be relied on to confront the parliamentary majority, it seems that the youth movement which was defeated in the elections will become the new popular opposition. The Islamists won the Egyptian elections for many reasons, and the youth, liberal and secular movement failed as a result of numerous factors. But the actual battle between the two sides may well begin with the first anniversary of the Revolution, and on the occasion of the results of the parliamentary elections. Indeed, the two events, and what they entail, represent the main source of frustration for the youth movement, especially in terms of their most prominent figures having not been able to reach Parliament, and in terms of the slogans they have raised, and continue to raise, not having been met. This movement will try to start anew, by returning to protest in Tahrir Square and perhaps by increasing the number of protests. Yet its fight will not be easy, in the face of a Military Council that is uncomfortable with its activity and a Parliament that rejects its slogans. The Council even continues to level accusations against it of working with foreign forces and receiving funding from them. It also continues to raid the offices of human rights organizations under various pretext, ban those in charge of them from traveling and refer others to military courts. The danger that such methods represent resides not only in the fact that they are identical to the methods employed by the former regime, but also in the fact that they attempt to undermine the credibility of the youth movement and of civil society movements, and of everything they mean in terms of clinging to human rights and equality before the constitution and the law, of laying the foundations of political pluralism, and of strengthening democratic practices. In parallel to this, and despite the Muslim Brotherhood declaring that it seeks after national agreements with non-Islamist coalitions in Parliament, the political conduct of its members raises questions about the credibility of such an orientation. This is due to two main factors: the first being the Muslim Brotherhood's new relationship with the Military Council, and the second the state of polarization and the outbidding taking place between the Brotherhood and the Salafists. Thus the Egyptian Revolution finds itself, a year after the departure of the former regime, surrounded by strong walls that prevent it from continuing to purge the legacy of the former regime and move forward on its path to democracy, pluralism and a secular state.
