By Rami G. Khouri 

I am disinclined to use an apocalyptic lens to view the turbulent situation in Egypt, including Friday’s demonstrations for and against the armed forces’ removal of former President Mohammad Morsi. What happens on the streets Friday afternoon (I am writing this column Friday morning) is not the most important thing in Egypt today – because it has been made abundantly clear in the past 30 months that there is not a single street dynamic in Egypt that will rule the country, but rather multiple movements that reflect a variety of mass popular sentiments.

 

We should not exaggerate the consequences of any set of events on any single day. For what we are witnessing in Egypt is healthy and fully expected, because it continues to shape the contours, rules and players of a new public political sphere in Egypt where Egyptians themselves are engaging each other in an epic contest of nation-building and self-determination.

 

Egypt has one overriding priority: how these movements translate mass emotions, grievances, demands and activism into a functioning political process that enjoys an emphatic consensus among a large majority of Egyptians. Also, a single important issue ultimately will define when and how today’s turbulence gives way to a stable new political order.

 

This issue is whether the political system can translate into state policies the powerful, defining slogans of the Jan. 25, 2011, uprising that continue to animate street protests around the entire region: dignity, bread, jobs and social justice (or some variation on that core theme).

 

It is fascinating that all the main actors these days claim to speak in the name of millions of Egyptians who want to translate their desires into the reality of their lives. Yet none of these actors have shown an ability to do this. And when any of them has tried to grab power by force, they have been fiercely pushed back by mass street protests that enjoyed the support of some of the other actors. So Islamists and youths pushed back against the armed forces when they tried to grab power in 2011-12; and the armed forces and youths together ousted Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood this month.

 

The country missed its first chance to make a smooth democratic transition in 2011-12 when all four main actors then – the armed forces, the Islamists, the revolutionary youths and the non-Islamist opposition – performed amateurishly, since none of them had any previous experience in democratic pluralism. Little has changed in the past two years, other than that the two principal protagonists today – the armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood – have also shown their willingness and ability to act like thugs.

 

The armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood are surrounded and often supported by a second ring of Egyptians who come in and out of the political arena to tilt the momentum of the day in different directions, including youth movements such as Tamarod (Rebellion), the fundamentalist Salafist Islamists, the old guard fulul, and half a dozen others. The armed forces – showing their expected incompetence and arrogance in political life – wildly overreacted to their sense of responsibility to protect Egypt’s national integrity when they made their last two moves: In early July they ousted Morsi at the behest of many Egyptians in the street, and this week they called for mass demonstrations Friday to support their drive to whittle down the Muslim Brotherhood into an insignificant and docile movement.

 

It is fascinating and positive that we are witnessing splits within all these groups, especially the Islamists and the youths, and there are reports of quiet disagreements among officers about the most appropriate role for the armed forces in the public arena. The Friday demonstrations will exacerbate these fissures, and could lead to more manageable groupings of citizens who also learn to operate in a structured political system. Such a system will hopefully be one in which – like the street politics today – success and incumbency will always be defined by the capacity of those in power to deliver to the citizenry the promise of dignity, bread, jobs and social justice.

 

I am heartened by the important development earlier this week when Egypt’s former Muslim Brotherhood-named prime minister, Hisham Qandil, warned against continuing mass rallies and offered a six-point plan to lower tensions and move to resolve Egypt’s sharp political crisis. He thought such moves could clear the air and “enable the parties to move forward and engage in negotiations.”

 

I hope and expect that the current spree of street demonstrations and occasional outbreaks of violence will soon push the protagonists to acknowledge the limited impact of dueling demonstrations that negate one another, and instead shift to negotiating new political rules, as Qandil suggests. The critical element to watch in all this has remained unchanged since January 2011: whether any of these actors can convincingly demonstrate that their policies can respond to the citizenry’s demand for dignity, bread, jobs and social justice.