what is left?

There doesn’t seem to be much left of the Egyptian Revolution.

*Though the Emergency Law was ended, the military was given new powers to arrest civilians for non-military crimes.

*Parliament has been suspended, ending the one institutionalized form of opposition to the military regime.

*The Courts have now lost whatever respect they retained.

*Shafik will now almost surely win the election (Morsi may even withdraw in protest), which will amount to the installation of another Mubarak-type President with the full backing of the Army.

In a way it’s almost comical, and the past 1.5 years in Egypt will long be studied as a way for regimes to appear to go along with revolutions while subverting them every step of the way (even Romania didn’t do it this smoothly).

So, what is left of the Egyptian Revolution? I think just one thing, though it may still prove to be important: the disappearance of the stagnant fear that was felt prior to January 25, 2011. Violent repression could and likely will still occur in the months to come, but there is now perhaps a critical mass of Egyptians less willing to accept it than before.

I would agree with the article linked to in the post below that we are very, very unlikely to return to stable, Mubarak-style military rule at this point. There are too many destabilizing forces now out of the bottle, and one of them is the tottering economic state of the country.