The Next Step for Egypt's Opposition

By Mohamed Elbaradei
February 10, 2011
Cairo
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/opinion/11elbaradei.html

WHEN I was a young man in Cairo, we voiced our
political views in whispers, if at all, and only to
friends we could trust. We lived in an atmosphere of
fear and repression. As far back as I can remember, I
felt outrage as I witnessed the misery of Egyptians
struggling to put food on the table, keep a roof over
their heads and get medical care. I saw firsthand how
poverty and repression can destroy values and crush
dignity, self-worth and hope.

Half a century later, the freedoms of the Egyptian
people remain largely denied. Egypt, the land of the
Library of Alexandria, of a culture that contributed
groundbreaking advances in mathematics, medicine and
science, has fallen far behind. More than 40 percent of
our people live on less than $2 per day. Nearly 30
percent are illiterate, and Egypt is on the list of
failed states.

Under the three decades of Hosni Mubarak's rule,
Egyptian society has lived under a draconian "emergency
law that strips people of their most basic rights,
including freedom of association and of assembly, and
has imprisoned tens of thousands of political
dissidents. While this Orwellian regime has been valued
by some of Egypt's Western allies as "stable,
providing, among other assets, a convenient location
for rendition, it has been in reality a ticking bomb
and a vehicle for radicalism.

But one aspect of Egyptian society has changed in
recent years. Young Egyptians, gazing through the
windows of the Internet, have gained a keener sense
than many of their elders of the freedoms and
opportunities they lack. They have found in social
media a way to interact and share ideas, bypassing, in
virtual space, the restrictions placed on physical
freedom of assembly.

The world has witnessed their courage and determination
in recent weeks, but democracy is not a cause that
first occurred to them on Jan. 25. Propelled by a
passionate belief in democratic ideals and the yearning
for a better future, they have long been mobilizing and
laying the groundwork for change that they view as
inevitable.

The tipping point came with the Tunisian revolution,
which sent a powerful psychological message: "Yes, we
can.

These young leaders are the future of Egypt. They are
too intelligent, too aware of what is at stake, too
weary of promises long unfulfilled, to settle for
anything less than the departure of the old regime. I
am humbled by their bravery and resolve.

Many, particularly in the West, have bought the Mubarak
regime's fiction that a democratic Egypt will turn into
chaos or a religious state, abrogate the fragile peace
with Israel and become hostile to the West. But the
people of Egypt -- the grandmothers in veils who have
dared to share Tahrir Square with army tanks, the
jubilant young people who have risked their lives for
their first taste of these new freedoms -- are not so
easily fooled.

The United States and its allies have spent the better
part of the last decade, at a cost of hundreds of
billions of dollars and countless lives, fighting wars
to establish democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now
that the youth of Cairo, armed with nothing but
Facebook and the power of their convictions, have drawn
millions into the street to demand a true Egyptian
democracy, it would be absurd to continue to tacitly
endorse the rule of a regime that has lost its own
people's trust.

Egypt will not wait forever on this caricature of a
leader we witnessed on television yesterday evening,
deaf to the voice of the people, hanging on obsessively
to power that is no longer his to keep.

What needs to happen instead is a peaceful and orderly
transition of power, to channel the revolutionary
fervor into concrete steps for a new Egypt based on
freedom and social justice. The new leaders will have
to guarantee the rights of all Egyptians. They will
need to dissolve the current Parliament, no longer
remotely representative of the people. They will also
need to abolish the Constitution, which has become an
instrument of repression, and replace it with a
provisional Constitution, a three-person presidential
council and a transitional government of national
unity.

The presidential council should include a
representative of the military, embodying the sharing
of power needed to ensure continuity and stability
during this critical transition. The job of the
presidential council and the interim government during
this period should be to set in motion the process that
will turn Egypt into a free and democratic society.
This includes drafting a democratic Constitution to be
put to a referendum, and preparing for free and fair
presidential and parliamentary elections within one
year.

We are at the dawn of a new Egypt. A free and
democratic society, at peace with itself and with its
neighbors, will be a bulwark of stability in the Middle
East and a worthy partner in the international
community. The rebirth of Egypt represents the hope of
a new era in which Arab society, Muslim culture and the
Middle East are no longer viewed through the lens of
war and radicalism, but as contributors to the forward
march of humanity, modernized by advanced science and
technology, enriched by our diversity of art and
culture and united by shared universal values.

We have nothing to fear but the shadow of a repressive
past.

Mohamed ElBaradei, as the director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 2005. He is the author of the forthcoming book
"The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous
Times.

___________________________________________

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