Has Egypt’s revolution failed?
As Egypt prepares for presidential elections this weekend, activists claim that gains made during the revolution could be wiped out after a court ruling overturned last year’s parliamentary poll.
The country’s troubled transition looks to be entering a new, problematic phase.
Islamists warn that the gains of the revolt which toppled Hosni Mubarak could be wiped out after Egypt’s supreme court dissolved parliament. It also ruled that Mubarak’s last premier could run in this weekend’s presidential race.
The 6 April movement, which helped galvanise Egyptians against Mubarak, called for a protest march on Friday that would head to Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“We will save our revolution. We will save Egypt from military rule,” the group said in a statement sent out on Friday.
The main target of the group’s opposition is presidential contender Ahmed Shafik, a former air force commander who was appointed prime minister in Mubarak’s last days in office.
They fear he will seek to rebuild Mubarak’s repressive state and reverse the gains of the revolt, although he denies this.
Shafik is pitted in the race against Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose group secured the biggest bloc in parliament and with other Islamists forms a majority in the assembly.
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‘Dangerous’ days
The Brotherhood said on Thursday that the court rulings indicated Egypt was heading into “very difficult days that might be more dangerous than the last days of Mubarak’s rule”.
“All the democratic gains of the revolution could be wiped out and overturned with the handing of power to one of the symbols of the previous era,” it said.
Mona Makram Ebeid, a political scientist and member of a body that advises the military council, speaking before the rulings said: “We are back to the political dynamic of secular versus Islamist, of a civil state versus an Islamist state.
“That is what we as political forces are confronted with today, causing almost a gridlock,” she said, referring to the months of wrangling between the army, Islamists, liberals and other parties seeking to carve a new course for the nation.”