Students ponder anti-Mubarak revolt, two years later

Two years ago Islam Ali, then a first-year law student, joined thousands of Egyptians in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in an uprising against long-serving president Hosni Mubarak. The 18-day protests forced Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years in power. Today, Islam is disillusioned.

“When we faced the brutality of Mubarak’s police in Tahrir, our slogan was ‘Bread, Freedom and Social Justice,” he said, referring to a famous slogan of the revolt. “After two years, nothing has changed. Most Egyptians are even poorer than before. We have replaced Mubarak’s dictatorship with a religious dictatorship.”

The 22-year-old student was echoing claims by the secular-minded opposition that the incumbent President Mohammed Mursi is turning Egypt into a theocracy. Last June Mursi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a professor of engineering, became Egypt's first elected civilian president.

“Mursi and his group are only interested in tightening their grip on power. They have broken their promise to improve life for Egyptians. And like everything else in Egypt, higher education has not improved,” said Islam.

“The regime has also failed to punish those who killed peaceful protesters during and after the revolution,” he added.

Most policemen suspected of involvement in killing more than 800 protesters during the uprising against Mubarak have been acquitted for lack of evidence. Courts, meanwhile, are hearing a dozen cases on protesters slain in clashes with police under the military, which ruled Egypt for 16 months after Mubarak's ouster.

Mursi has pledged to order retrials of acquitted policemen and former officials if new evidence emerges.

“A revolution? What revolution?” Hend al-Gendy, a student at the Cairo-based Ain Shams University’s school of commerce, asked cynically. “Those who killed the people and looted their money are still at large,” she added.

Hend is particularly dissatisfied with how Mursi has been running the country in the past eight months. “He should stop acting as if he were in power to serve the Muslim Brotherhood's interests. If not, Egypt will see more trouble.”

Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country with 83 million people, has recently been gripped by political turmoil due to wrangling between the Islamist-backed president and the opposition. The economy is the main casualty, with the local pound slipping to its lowest point against the dollar in 10 years.

A series of deadly incidents, including two train crashes, have brought Mursi under more criticism. His backers, however, say it is unfair to expect Mursi to remove what they call “30 years of corruption” under Mubarak.

“We have to be logical and patient,” said Mohammed Youssef, a self-professed Islamist Salafist who studies science at Ain Shams University. "The man [Mursi] has been in power for only eight months, grappling with a mound of problems he has inherited from Mubarak. He is doing his best and we have to help him.”

Mohammed is of the view that the Egyptian revolt is on the right track.

“Of course, there are difficulties, but this is the case with all revolutions. One main gain from the revolution is that we now have the right to elect the president and change him if we want every four years at the ballot box. The president is no longer a pharaoh with absolute powers.”

Egypt's newly approved constitution has reduced the president's term in office to four years instead of six, with a two-tenure cap. In the previous constitution, the president could stay in power for unlimited terms.

To George Morad, a pharmacy student at the German University in Cairo, the only fulfilled objective of the revolt so far is Mubarak’s toppling.

“The revolution's failure started when some political powers were allowed to manipulate it,” he said. “The situation got worse when the people voted for the Muslim Brotherhood in the parliamentary and then presidential elections,” added the 19-year-old student.

Morad said he would join mass protests called by the opposition on the second anniversary of the uprising against Mursi and the Brotherhood. “I want to express anger bottled up inside me, whether peacefully or by participating in a second revolution.”