New Egypt has a lot on its plate

In Cairo last week I found myself buying a couple of ‘I love Egypt' T-shirts. When a woman then came up to me and, with much the same solemn pushiness as a squeegee merchant, began to paint the colours of the Egyptian flag on my hand, I did not resist.

Speakers in one corner were working up a thin crowd, promising retribution for the ancient regime, justice to the masses. Indifferent to them, large Egyptian families picnicked on a freshly laid lawn, the clumps of grass still springing up unevenly from the ground.

Not far from the square, on the corniche, a small pro-Mubarak demonstration was under way. Earlier in the day, radical Islamists had demonstrated before the American embassy in their first public show of strength.

Adding to the confusing reality of post-Mubarak Egypt, thousands of demonstrators in the southern city of Qena had been agitating for days on end against a newly appointed Christian governor. But, here, in Tahrir Square, the main stage for Egypt's festival of democracy, day-tripping revellers like myself easily outnumbered protesters and activists.

The great drama of Mubarak's overthrow behind it, Egypt now copes with an agenda as full as that of a country newly liberated from colonial rule: self-government, social equality, economic consolidation and cultural regeneration.

At least one of the many post-revolutionary promises — reassertion of national pride — is already being fulfilled. Mediating the Palestinian agreement between Fatah and Hamas, and releasing Gaza from a brutish captivity, the new Egyptian foreign minister realises a long-thwarted Egyptian desire for dignity and prestige in the wider world.

Sombre mood

Political groups are scrambling to get themselves into shape for the national elections due in September; there are already rumours of secret deals between the army and the Islamists, and of other crass expediencies of party politics. Now that it is here, the post-Mubarak era is not as marvellous as it seemed in the imagination.

Still, the visitor to Cairo is quickly infected by the excitement of sovereignty, the new political emotions and ideas suddenly in play. Burdened by the daily imperatives of survival and work, few people could afford the time and leisure to think about the future, let alone form political movements to change it.

For these reflexively conservative Egyptians, long content to mind their own business, their country is now full of threats rather than opportunities. And their mood of foreboding is not an overreaction.

For the hard work of creating democratic institutions has barely begun. Indeed, democracy is hardly an adequate word to describe the political system that must not only ensure individual rights and civil liberties but, more importantly, prove itself responsive to the plight of nearly half the population that lives on less than $2 (Dh7.30) a day.

Egypt's most urgent challenges are unquestionably economic. The western media, inevitably highlighting English-speaking Egyptians, may have given the impression that the uprising was the work of middle-class Facebookistas and the Twitterati alone. It was actually fuelled in its most important stages by the distress and rage of the labouring classes, which has been expressed in sporadic protests over recent years.

Deepening divisions

A series of workers' strikes in early February proved crucial in forcing Mubarak out. Many more strikes have broken out since; the general economic outlook has worsened since February. Food price inflation is running at over 50 per cent; foreign exchange reserves are depleting fast. Tourists, major contributors to the national GDP, have disappeared. That a draconian IMF bailout and the usual brutality towards the weak will accompany political liberalisation is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Egypt's luck in this regard seems particularly bad from where I write, Indonesia — another former military despotism from the cold war. Indonesia stumbled into multi-party democracy following a regional financial crisis, but its political journey has been smoothed subsequently by a strong economy, primarily the growing Chinese and Indian demand for Indonesian commodities.

The elections in September may expose greater tensions of class, clan, gender and religion. Far from being a miraculous panacea, popular enfranchisement in heterogenous societies deepens old divisions and conflicts.

Christians in Indonesia feel more rather than less insecure today, as hardline Islamic groups proliferate. Crony capitalists, the bane of pre-democratic Indonesia, have multiplied; members of the military have reinvented themselves, and possess a new authority derived from the ballot box.

The example of Indonesia proves that many social, political and economic problems do not simply disappear when despotic rule ends; indeed, they can grow more tenacious. It is painful to think that for Egypt, too, democracy may entail the recycling of old elites, and the creation of a new class of oppressors and plunderers. But the experience of other ‘democracies' cautions us against rejecting this possibility. Indeed, for tourists to Egypt's revolution, it may be the best insurance against cruel disenchantment.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of Temptations of the West.