Every time I encounter another commentator gloomily opining on the "failed outcomes" of Egypt's revolution, I find myself wondering why the devil people were foolish enough to start talking about it in the past-tense. I was dance-in-the-streets happy with Mubarak's fall, and I'm happy to admit it, but how could anyone have expected a tidy solution with a military junta swooping in to take his place?
Much of the public imagination, along with the media that helps inform it, seems to have chopped Egypt's narrative into two mutually exclusive chapters: "the revolution," ending with Mubarek's ouster, and "the outcome," encompassing everything that followed. Because this model precludes the concept that the revolution is an ongoing process, one that could in fact encompass a very large amount of chapters, any given challenge in the present can be used as a brownie-point deduction - just one other thing the revolution "failed to make possible."
Pascal Boniface, a prominent French political analyst, and Director of the Institute for International Relations and Strategies, assures the readers of Egypt's Al-Ahram Daily that what Egypt is going through is normal. "You cannot pass from one system to the other in one day," he says.
While this outlook might appear to swing to the opposite, permissive side of the spectrum, broadening the time-frame over which we assess results is, I believe, imperative.
Just yesterday, the Egyptian government fired 669 police officers, recognizing a key demand from protestors that murderous raping factions of the so-called law enforcement body be brought to justice.
Are these grounds for rejoicing? No, not properly, but it should be grounds enough for remembering that no perception of Egypt is acceptable unless it makes room for surprises.
Such is the nature of transformation.
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