It’s been nearly a year since the hated Mubarak was removed from power after massive popular protests and a general strike launched by the newly-formed Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions.

On his abdication, Mubarak announced that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) under Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi  would be running operations until the elections. They set up a puppet civilian cabinet headed by prime minister Essam Sharraf.

Though they claim to be acting in the interests of the democratic revolution the SCAF is determined to hold onto power. Since Mubarak was ousted they have maintained his tradition of suppressing the rights to protest, to strike and to political expression.

More than 12,000 civilians have been dragged before military tribunals since the dictators’ fall, which is more than during his entire time in power. Many of these have been arrested and tortured for blogging, reporting, and protesting.

Thousands have been campaigning since the beginning of military rule against the ‘emergency law’ which allows the army the right to crack down on political expression, and calling for the downfall of the military rule in Egypt.

The actions of Field Marshall Tantawi and the rest of the military junta demonstrates their contempt for popular protest. On May Day they sent first undercovers and then Riot Police to break up celebrations in Tahrir Square.

In October, when Coptic Christians protested against a church being burned down by Salafist islamists, the army used live ammunition and tanks to break up the protests, before using state TV to claim that the army was attacked by the Copts. They encouraged supremacist mobs to attack the protestors, and by the time they had been dispersed, more than 20 had died at the hands of the state and the reactionaries.

With the long and complicated Egyptian election process having begun on Wednesday, and lasting over three months, many ordinary Egyptian people are rightly worried about the influence that the military regime will have over the outcome of the elections.

A second revolution?

Indeed, the recent round of protests which have been widely hailed as the beginning of a second revolution, were primarily directed against the holding of sham elections by the same military rule.

Protestors have come to realise that the military regime that they revolted against in February is still in power, just with a new ruling clique. This was demonstrated on November 19th when families of the revolution’s martyrs protested against the continued injustice and were met with outright brutality by the police, with their rubber bullets and clubs.

This heavy-handed action brought millions out in protests, strikes and occupations across the country, which has been met with heavy-duty tear gas, rubber bullets, and in some cases live ammunition. Over 40 have died in the course of a week and thousands more were injured.

The massive popular demonstrations should be seen as a continuation of the February revolution, which forced Egypt’s ruling class to ditch Mubarak, but only to buy time to consolidate their power by ensuring that pro-establishment forces like the Muslim Brotherhood could take advantage of the chaotic election process.

Many political factions have been represented in this recent movement- socialists and anarchists joined in the demonstrations, as well as young islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood’s opposition to the protests have discredited the organisation to many and caused splits in the organisation. Attempts by their leader Mohamed El Beltagi to convince protestors to leave Tahrir Square led to him getting kicked out.

For the moment the movement has died down as the people of Egypt vote and protesters prepare for their next wave of action.

As the western media and politicians hail the high turnout at the ballot box, favourably counterposing this to the protests and strikes which shook the regime, it is clear that they, Egypt’s military junta, and Mubarak-era reactionaries clinging to power are hoping that the elections will funnel people’s anger into the manageable expression of bourgeois parliamentary democracy – where state power remains in the hand of the police, the army and the courts, who have yet to be purged of the corrupt and murderous officials responsible for thousands of deaths.

So while it is true that by voting many Egyptians are exercising a right they have fought for which their parents and grandparents never had, participation has been boosted by the threat of a fine which would be equivalent to two months’ wages for the average Egyptian worker.

Where the junta stands

During the recent protests, Obama spoke in favour of the military junta, saying that they needed to crack down on dissent and potential disruptions to the elections.

The US has also shipped millions of dollars in military aid to the regime, arming it against any potential uprising against it of those who want to see true democracy and an end to poverty – just as they armed Mubarak for decades before.

The leadership of the armed forces are the imperialists’ best ally in Egypt, and across many states in North Africa and the Middle East. The army leaders are more than happy to allow Western multinationals to drive down wages and exploit both the people and raw-materials of Egypt so long as they’re allowed to be the middle-men with exclusive control over what power and wealth is not shipped out of the country.

Many of its leading figures were part of the Mubarak regime, they have proved their willingness to allow imperialism to continue its’ parasitic relationship with Egypt, and they have proved that they are not willing to allow genuine democracy or social change in the country. They have even publicly stated that they will not allow any new government formed from the elections to change the constitutional power of the Egyptian Army to dictate the political rights and structures of the country.

The SCAF are not the allies of the revolution, they are the most committed defenders of the existing social order. The overthrow of dictatorship and institution of (limited) democratic rights does not change the social basis of the Egpytian state. The Egyptian state remains a capitalist state, with the private ownership of the means of production by national and international capitalists unchallenged. It is the threat to this social order posed by the revolutionary general strikes which has led SCAF to launch such vicious repression against the workers’ movement.

Building an alternative 

If  the masses of unemployed youth, workers and oppressed women want to end military rule, then they need to return to and develop the tactics that brought down Mubarak.

The 1.4 million workers of the Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions need to launch a general strike to paralyse the economy. They should also go to workplaces where workers aren’t unionised or are still part of the ‘official’ trade unions which are tied to the state, and argue for mass meetings to vote through strike action and set up councils in each workplace to control the strike.

These strike committees played a pivotal role the February revolution and can form the basis for a new type of democracy- a workers’ democracy. They can determine what needs to be produced and distributed for the strike to continue, organise the self-defence of picket lines and protests, and provide an alternative source of power to the corrupt regime. From committees of the workplace, workers can resurrect the popular defence and organisation committees which maintained food distribution and security in working class areas during the February revolution.

But workers cannot just ignore the army or hope that big enough strikes and protests will force them to grant limited concessions.  Instead they need to break it and prevent the regular soldiers from being used to crush their demands for democracy.

They need to encourage the soldiers to break from their officers by fighting for democracy within the army as well as wider society. Soldiers’ committees should elect their own officers and approve any orders given through the military command.

These democratic bodies, composed of workers’ and soldiers’ delegates, represent the real power in society and could form the basis for a constituent assembly which can determine what kind of society the new Egypt will be, and how it will be organised economically and politically.

A  revolutionary party

But there is one key ingredient missing if the democratic revolution is to be made ‘permanent’ – continuing to a working-class socialist revolution. The missing ingredient is a revolutionary party which can provide leadership to the millions of Egyptians looking for an alternative to the poverty and tyranny which has accompanied both Mubarak and the SCAF.

There are a number of socialist groups in Egypt but many of them have been quick to regard the military generals as reformable and sought to engage the liberal wing of the new regime in dialogue, rather than fighting for a working-class power.

The forces are there to form a new party, in the independent trade unions, in the militant protesters, and in the youth movements  fighting to complete the revolution.

They need to commit to fighting for a permanent revolution to empower the workers and poor if they want to put an end to the counter-revolution, led by the generals, the islamists and armed and backed by western imperialism.

Read more

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Syria on brink of civil war

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Who runs Egpypt – the people or the army?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Libya’s revolution: our perspective 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………