Today, after three weeks of intense protest, after a whole generation was mobilized, Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak has resigned from 30 years of one-man rule. By all accounts joy was general over the whole of Egypt.
Mubarak, like Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, tried various stalling methods, including the latest, handing off “most” of his power to his newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman. But none of it worked. The people of Egypt were done with him.
What’s the tech connection? WHO ON EARTH CARES!?
In the following weeks and months, people will reflect on the role Facebook and Twitter and other online tools played in mobilizing people, informing them of protest plans, getting their struggles out to the watching world. Some will call it a Facebook revolution, or the Al Jazeera revolution, others, more sensible, will shout them down. Some will call it a triumph of liberation technology, others will call it a triumph of a liberated people. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. We’ve covered the technical element of #jan25 extensively here at ReadWriteWeb. It’s just that it doesn’t matter right now.
What matters is that we, not just the Egyptians, are now living in a world where difficult things are possible, where beautiful things are doable. That changes everything. The writer Delmore Schwartz famously said, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.” But when those dreams finally come true, you realize the responsibilities are just beginning.
Right now, control of Egypt has devolved into the hands of the country’s military. Egypt’s military is well-regarded and trusted, unlike its police and security forces, who are reviled. But a military-run Egypt replaces one kind of a problem with another. The people on the ground in Egypt now have the unenviable task of securing a transition from protest to power. As the Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismark said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” There’s going to be a lot of people who are going to have to hold their nose and make an awful lot of sausage.
Government is never as romantic as rebellion but without it rebellions are meaningless. If you watched and encouraged from the sidelines – on Twitter or Facebook – I kind of hope you stick around. The Egyptians are going to need cheerleaders more than ever.
So let us at ReadWriteWeb say:
We believe in you. You turned your dream into reality. Now you will turn your reality into a country worthy of those dreams.
THANK GOD. THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO DIED FOR US TO LIVE IN FREEDOM. THANKS TO ALL EGYPTIANS WHO SLEPT ROUGH IN TAHRIR, ALEXANDRIA AND EVERYWHERE. THANK YOU ALL ON THIS PAGE FOR YOUR SUPPORT & YOUR AMAZING GREATNESS & HELP. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CALLED HIS LEADER AND HIS REPRESENTATIVE. THANK YOU TUNISIA. WE ARE ALLL EGYPTIANS. YOU ARE ALL EGYPTIANS. WE ARE ALL KHALED SAID
Alexandria photo courtesy of Al Jazeera.
