YEN Egypt

Who will change Egypt? Will it be the National Democratic Party (NDP), which has been ruling the country for more than three decades and controls everything, or the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest political group in Egypt, which suffers intellectually and politically?

The fact is, it will be neither this nor that. Egypt will be changed through its youth and the new generations that will reach political maturity in the coming five years.

Egypt needs what can be called a “critical mass” — a human bloc that can change the balance of power and alter the political equation once it attains a certain degree of awareness and has a genuine desire to change. In the following lines I will explain where this critical mass will emanate from and how it will be formed.

Most of the economic policies undertaken by the new elite inside the NDP aim to liberalize the Egyptian economy and to engage in an era of market economy through privatization of public sector companies and the restructuring of many economic sectors with a view to making a historic disengagement between the state and society — ending a bond that has been in place for over five thousand years, considering that ancient Egypt was a centralized state.

The current privatization processes will lead to a series of social changes during the next ten years, which will result in shifts in the social stratification and relative weight of the various social blocs, making the middle classes more influential.

All demographic indicators point to the fact that nearly two thirds of Egypt’s population, that is more than 50 million people, will be between 20 and 30 years old in the next five years.

This means that we are waiting for a kind of a “time bomb” of youth who will be in dire need of raising education and living standards to be able to stay abreast of internal and external economic and social changes.

So we will face a process of historic cohesion and blending between a new generation whose value system is characterized by a desire to live in dignity and freedom. They will be affected by the general atmosphere both at home and abroad and the information revolution, leading to a new generation with high expectations about the future – known in socio-psychology as a “revolution of expectations”. This generation will be the backbone of the new social movement.

At this point, I cannot rule out absolutely that this “critical mass” will have political demands on a par with the economic demands they will seek to satisfy by all possible means. At the same time, the current economic policies will lead to the formation of a bourgeoisie with new economic and political demands. This class serves as an engine of change in Egypt, along the lines of what happened in all democratization examples in East Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

This change will definitely not happen all of a sudden. It will be a “process” that will take time, ranging from five to ten years at least.

There are other conditions that must be in place in order for this “critical mass” to mature and have enough leverage to pressure the political regime, which will try to contain it. Perhaps the most important of these conditions is the existence of a genuine civil society that can raise the level of public awareness of a large segment of Egyptian youth, as well as the presence of political movements (parties, unions and groups) that can provide a legal framework for this bloc, so that they can move and exert concerted, legal pressure on the ruling regime.

The problem to be confronted by the next political regime in Egypt will not be how to come to power, but rather how to run the country in light of the existence of this “critical mass” and respond effectively to their demands. This is the real challenge.

Khalil Al-Ananiis an expert on Political Islam and Deputy Editor of Al Siyassa Al Dawliya journal published by Al-Ahram Foundation.