Curse of the pharaohs
For those of us who have appropriated the revolution of the Egyptian people as our own victory (what with our commitment to tweet in behalf of those putting their bodies on the line), it's easy not to see what lies ahead of a nation fresh off the experience of ouster. With Hosni Mubarak gone, it seems that the tried-and-tested formula of installing and allowing an unfamiliar (and often Western) form of governance to spontaneously build and grow itself in a very different territory.
We find it familiar, if not inspiring, in this country; if not because in too many ways, we're a good example of a state born out of revolutions that were never completed.
If there's anything our own experience of revolution should teach the world, it's that revolutions deal with something fundamental. Regime change is incidental to structural change, which makes it different from insurrections and coups. To free one's self from the oppressor is a good thing, but to do so with the benefit of chaining one's self to a different sort of oppressor is anything but revolutionary.
The 1986 People Power Revolution showed that sowing the seeds of revolution is different from growing the tree of revolution. The fundamentals of the previous regime – systemic greed, graft, corruption, and the withering of institutions – are still with our nation today. Corruption alone has permeated the system enough to breathe life (in the case of the inaugural promise of President Aquino to eliminate corruption) and to take life (in the case of Sec. Angelo Reyes taking his own life following a corruption scandal).
If anything, we've reveled in ouster more than in rebuilding our institutions. EDSA I, EDSA II, and to a certain extent EDSA III have rocked and toppled regimes, but have not succeeded in bringing the fundamental changes that complete a revolution. There are necessities in a positive, democratic revolution that we have yet to gain in our own protracted experience: inviolable human rights, the fair and just access to the catalysts of human development, and necessary things like food, water, shelter, and education for all.
I don't agree with the left all the time, but I do agree with militants who say that revolutions are more than a change in the order of governance (as with changes in the Constitution), but a fundamental change in the order of things. Revolution must be grounded on our experiences within society, the fundamentals of our relationships with each other. From the way we put food on the table, to the way we learn in school, to our say in the affairs of government, right down to how we define our situations. Without that fundamental change, we just took out a leader.
The experience of ouster is important in a revolution; yet ouster alone does not make a revolution. For Egypt, the revolution begins today: creating a working government, institutionalizing a coherent set of human rights applicable for their culture, and making sure that economic goods and catalysts to development are accessible for all. For us here in the Philippines, almost 25 years since we toppled a dictator, we have our own journey to complete a long-overdue cycle of revolution.
