Whoever sees the interview Egyptian broadcaster Wael Al Abrachi conducted with the father of the four year old who was sentenced to life in prison for participating in “murdering protestors” in Fayom two years ago, realises the scale of the scandalous mistake the Egyptian judiciaries have made. But it also reflects the renegade truth about what it has come to in Egypt; the unprecedented chaos and catastrophe that has gotten to the point that some could manipulate the judiciary system to this extent!
Officials tried to mask the scandal by saying that the one who is really wanted was the boy’s father, who seemed —from the interview, to be the farthest there is from politics and complexity. But assuming this shallow explanation was in fact correct, then it is a perfect implementation of the Arabic proverb that translates roughly to “more bad than good”.
Sentencing one hundred people all at once to justify killing protestors, having previously sentenced people by the hundreds to death-row and imprisonment, and the death of detainees by the tens and dozens under inhumane torture, all indicate an outrageous collapse of justice and the respective authorities and institutions.
This, all of it, in the aftermath of finding the body of Italian student Julio Regeni in Cairo after being abducted and tortured, so badly that Italian Minister of Interior stated on having seen the results of the coroner’s report that the student was “inhumanely brutalised”.
Unfortunately, this is normal in Egypt, as well as in many other Arab countries, shocking as it may be to the Italians —who’s Premier supported Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sisi saying “your war on terror is our war”. This is the phrase Italians recited to their prime Minister as they look over their postgrad student’s dead body, as several reports indicate the Egyptian security forces are prime suspect to the case; since Rigini was a supporter of the Arab Spring and wrote for a leftist journal of the opposition called “the Manifesto”.
This chaos does not stop at security and judiciaries, but extends to include Egyptian media and internal conflicts; there is a war going on between members of the security, police forces and their officers, and there is unfinished business among those our friend Khalil Anani called the Loyalist Right wing —supporters of President Al Sisi. And perhaps for those whom have kept tuned to the open media battle between President of Al Zamalek football club Murtada Mansoor and the renowned journalist Amro Adib, they would indeed be worried by this immense disintegration and its tolls on Egypt.
Accordingly, it is important that everybody understands that what is going on in Egypt and other countries, means that going back to old games and to typical Arab authoritarianism is neither possible nor reasonable, because counter-revolutions to the “Arab Spring” laid so far only chaos and failure.
More so, that entering into this kind of turmoil only serves the interests of political elites whose priorities are damaged by the democratic discourses that hava been long suspended in many Arab countries.
Obviously, counter-revolutions did not make the turn; nor is the Arab World in an overall acceptable situation after the “Arab Spring” was sabotaged. And it is enough to go back to the important World Back study Dr Marwan Muasher mentioned in his article of yesterday’s “Al Ghad” issue —about the factors that led to the surge of the “Arab Spring” and their survival in-spite of the “Spring”, to know that counter revolutions lay only “Waste”!
