How has Egypt changed? Egypt didn’t change, actually. It just – we have removed the very smooth and very thin surface of the regime, which is Mubarak, our former president. But the fact that the older regime is still there; they are still working, they are still in the leading position in our country, they are still leading the country to a place nobody knows where actually.
We are having the Supreme Council of Armed Forces – they are now ruling the country. And all I know about their vision is that they are trying to protect themselves. They know quite well that they are a good part of the older regime. And they have been participating in different corruption, dictatorship actions in the society. So they know quite well if they – if they go out from the rule, they will be punished and they will be charged for their crimes.
But actually what surprised me that they didn’t stop acting crimes. They are still doing some crimes against freedom, against revolution guys, against the demonstrators. And I think all the international community has witnessed what’s happening in Egypt, especially in Tahrir Square.
The people in Egypt, they are not satisfied. And they are disappointed from the revolution. But for me, this is kind of a misunderstanding because the revolution — it didn’t succeeded yet and we didn’t rule the country, we didn’t implement our vision for the future of this country.
So when you ask someone a very normal poor citizen what do you think about the revolution he would say, I didn’t gain anything from this revolution, which is so hard, because people when we started the revolution and they started to participate, they had a lot of expectations. And they wanted freedom, they wanted welfare, they wanted a good life standards. And what happened now is that all the things just in the same way. The salaries, the economic – the economy – everything is just the same way, which prevent the citizen from interacting or being more supporting for the revolution. There’s – they will just say, OK, stop it, enough revolution.
But I do think that when we lead the country – and I do believe that we are going to lead one day – I think there are going to be changes. And their life standards, their economic life, political life and their culture will change a lot.
I think the spark of our revolution started from one year before the revolution with Khaled Saeed accident. Khaled Saeed – he’s a guy from Alexandria, and he has been tortured and beaten by some of the police forces until he died. And what made the people in the streets and from different classes in the society interact with this specific case, that it was kind of a very cruel torture and the photos have been published everywhere and there were campaigns and there were demonstrations, marches – every kind of peaceful protesting against that.
And so we just to keep moving toward the revolution very smoothly until it came when Ben Ali and especially the Tunisian revolution happened. It was like if the Tunisian people made it, we can made it. And it’s kind – that people will think that the Tunisian people are only 10 million – their population – and we are 85 (million). So it’s kind of – I think people started to envy the Tunisian guys, and they thought that if we just can go out to the streets and with a very peaceful ways, you will do it. Maybe Mubarak will go and we can get our life, our freedom back.
But the election in 2010 – at the end of 2010, we had the worst election ever that we had in our country. It was kind of a mess, a big mess. And you will find fraud, you will find corruption, you will find violence, you will find people who will die. And you will find a very unusual ways of doing this election. And people were just very frustrated about that.
And I don’t believe that the Egyptian people, as most of the Egyptian – the societies around us, they are not that much interested in the foreign affairs and what’s happening around, but they are well concentrating and focused about what’s happening in our – in our country. So when it comes to the elections in 2010, it was kind of, OK, enough. We got enough from this regime.
Samar El Hussieny grew up in a politically oriented family in Egypt. Her father was a socialist opposition politician. She studied political science and has worked in the human rights field since 2005. She participated in several student awareness activities for youth during her college years and has been active in various civil society projects concerning human rights education, election monitoring and minority rights. She is a Program Officer at the Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies and is pursuing a master’s degree in political science.
Samar has been an activist in the Egyptian Revolution that began on January 25, 2011. She continues to work to promote freedom and support democracy during her country’s transitional period. Samar has also been intensively engaged on initiatives related to elections in Egypt. In addition to monitoring elections and the political process, she is involved in projects relating to minority rights, social media, and transitional justice in Egypt. Samar seeks to support reform movements and non-violent revolutions in the Arab World and beyond.
Samar was among the inaugural group of the George W. Bush Institute’s Women’s Initiative Fellowship Program in 2012, a leadership program designed to empower and equip women to catalyze change.
Samar hopes to be elected to national office and is planning to run for President of Egypt one day.
With a history dating back to the 10th millennium B.C., Egypt has long played a central role in the Middle East. Egypt is the largest Arab nation and has an influential voice in Arabic and Middle Eastern culture. Egypt has a diverse economy, but has struggled to create sustained economic growth and opportunities for its population of 84 million people.
The country has little experience with representative democracy. From 1956 to 1970, President Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt with a strong hand, nationalizing the Suez Canal and taking the country into conflict with the new state of Israel. Upon his death, Anwar al-Sadat became president. Together with other Arab nations, Sadat launched the October War against Israel in 1973. In 1979, Sadat signed a groundbreaking peace treaty with Israel.
From Sadat’s assassination in 1981 until the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Egypt was governed by President Hosni Mubarak. For all of Mubarak’s time in office, and for much of the time since his resignation, Egypt has been under “Emergency Law,” which allows the government to suspend constitutional rights, including limiting political activity and restricting free speech. Emergency Law also allows the government to use summary arrests against political opponents.
For four successive terms, Mubarak was reelected in referenda without an opponent. In 2005, under domestic and international pressure, Mubarak proposed a constitutional amendment to allow Egypt’s first multicandidate presidential elections. Because the amendment would have imposed severe restrictions on the eligibility of opposition candidates, opposition groups boycotted the vote. Mubarak claimed to have won the September 2005 presidential election with an official 88 percent of the vote, amid widespread allegations of fraud and vote rigging. The main opposition leader, Ayman Nour, was subsequently prosecuted by the government for forging signatures on petitions and was sentenced to five years in prison, provoking protests from the United States and other democratic countries.
Following the example of the Tunisian Revolution, large protests swept Egypt in early 2011. The military, led by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), withdrew its support of Mubarak. On February 11, 2011, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi then assumed power in Egypt. SCAF dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution.
In November 2011, Egypt held parliamentary elections that were reportedly fair and democratic. In June 2012, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was elected President, in part because liberal and secular forces failed to coalesce around a single candidate. Morsi’s popularity declined as he declared his orders immune from challenge, removed judicial review processes, and was accused of taking steps towards the implementation of Islamist policies. Conflict arose between those supporting Islamist policies and those seeking a more liberal and secular government. Protests occurred throughout his presidency until Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013. Muslim Brotherhood leaders were arrested and their camps and offices raided. Until new elections are held, a SCAF-installed provisional government led by acting President Adly Mansour is in control.
In its most recent report, the independent watchdog group Freedom House classifies Egypt as “partly free.” On its scale where 1 is the most free and 7is the least free, Egypt earned scores of 5 in both the civil liberties and political rights categories.
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