STORY SUMMARY

January 20, 2014 12:27 AM
By Rami G. Khouri
The Daily Star

In the past three years since the overthrow of the Hosni Mubarak’s government, on my regular visits to Cairo I have watched with fascination, pride and hope the birth of Arab citizens and the sudden emergence of a public political sphere – an open, pluralistic space where people from different ideological and cultural perspectives could freely compete for political power and legitimate, democratic control of the government. I have witnessed very different things in Cairo this week, during and after the referendum on the new Egyptian constitution that was drawn up in recent months by the interim government that was installed by armed forces commander Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, and that also has led a tough campaign to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2011, according to government figures, 2.4 million Egyptians were both.

The interim government represents a deep and persistent power structure in Egypt that has dominated society for over half a century.

Whether Sisi runs for president or not seems to me not the main issue; more significant is whether the existing interim government and this power structure that it mirrors has the capacity to meet the needs of the 85 million Egyptians and the 2.4 million being born every year.

Read more: http://dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2014/Jan-20/244564-anthropology-not-politics-rules-in-egypt.ashx#ixzz2qvBqnjpf
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)