Sunday, June 24, 2012

Morsi's win is a victory for the revolution

Morsi's victory is the best progressives could have hoped for, and will allow a grassroots movement to slowly build.

By Mark LeVine
Al-Jazeera

"........Now the country's progressive forces can spend their time building an opposition that is rooted in society and can effectively challenge the political lies and illusionary narratives that will be liberally dispensed by the old/new system to pacify the masses. Equally important, they can develop a narrative for the future that the majority of Egyptians can believe has a chance of being realised, rather than leading to the chaos and instability that the military has constantly warned them would come with any attempt to radically change the structures and relations of power governing Egyptian society.

Of course, this grassroots strategy will take years to take hold, and will come up against the interests of the patronage and power networks of the Brotherhood and the military. And before anything can happen, the thousands of progressive activists who've fallen into a funk in the past few months need to "get off the couch, stop complaining" and get back to work, as one young activist leader wrote on his Facebook page yesterday.

But if the incompetent performance of SCAF, the Brotherhood and the rest of Egypt's power elite is any indication, there will be plenty of opportunities for Egypt's revolutionary forces to lay the foundation for a powerful opposition movement that will have a fighting chance to win real power the next time Egyptians head to the polls.

This is the best any revolutionary movement can hope for less than two years into a struggle which, if history is any guide, will take decades to decide."

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