“So how does it feel to be an Egyptian this morning?” asked the journalist.
“I feel FREE!” was the response from an overwhelmed and excited young woman; a woman who was articulate and impressive, a woman who probably thought that she would never be able to speak her mind, a woman who probably wasn’t a political progressive but had suddenly witnessed something that made her think about what was possible in her beloved country.
Nobody was working, she said and yet the streets still got cleaned because the young people joined together to make it so. The transport system was working because the drivers were united with the protestors and they wanted to ensure that people could travel into Tahrir Square to voice the opinions of the nation. The army stood back and did not interfere with the human rights of these people to protest about the way that they had been governed. The woman went on to say there were no decisions from government and it made her think. Did she really need a government after all? Surely the people could run this show on their own.
Pretty damn impressive. Pretty exciting, until you consider the fact that the army are still calling the shots and the country is effectively under martial law at present.
But there is such force in the voices that are being reported, such passion, such honesty and awakening.
We complain in the West about our governments in various ways such as blogs or comments in newspapers and we take this for granted. It is our right to speak but we cannot really imagine what it must be like to have this voice made unlawful. The frustration and anger of such an act seems almost implausible and yet these people in Egypt and far too many other places around the world are denied this absolute human right. Finding it once more, or in this case, for the first time, must be the most liberating thing in the world.
Before I go on any further, I do not profess to be an academic or an intellectual. I am a woman, sitting in the comfort of her own home, simply looking out on the world that is available for me to see and explaining my thoughts on the issue. Although I am politically interested, I am not politically astute and I certainly could not claim to understand the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. However, I have always, like so many, had an eye on this area of the world.
Many years ago, when there was some dreadful fighting in the area, I listened to the radio with my Mother. I looked at her with horror and said, “Don’t they realise they are killing someone’s brother and father?”
Such is the innocence of youth. Such is the misunderstanding of a three or four year old and yet there was probably more wisdom in my simple, childish words than anything that was coming from the governments of the warring countries at that time.
And the strange thing is that I still ask this question in times of conflict and I still don’t understand.
Yesterday, I looked at the makeshift tents in the middle of Tahrir Square and wondered. Suddenly, I was transported into a future time when similar temporary housing or toilets were to be seen all over Parliament Square. I imagined a train of people from Trafalgar to Parliament, camping down in the middle of Whitehall, demanding justice from the government of the time, trying to get them to see that the people would not stand for policies that continued and reinforced the horrendous inequalities in this country.
My son has just interrupted my writing to report on something he has just seen on the news. He has explained that the life expectancy in Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales valleys is worse than post-war Iraq. He questioned this and suggested that surely it meant parts of post-war Iraq, and he is probably correct in this assumption. However, the facts are there. The average age of a man dying in Iraq is 64. In the ex-mining valleys of South Wales, it is 58.
And we think that materialism, capitalism and the consumer life is progressive and without inequity?
The people of Egypt have got to be careful. They have got to adhere to their principles of change. They cannot allow themselves to be swallowed into consumerism, with the West taking over with their enforced and supposedly superior form of democracy. I mean, where precisely is democracy actually working at present?
In Italy, where a corrupt megalomaniac has control over the media, and that is before one gets to the debauchery of power? In France, where the people continually strike to no obvious effect? In Britain, where the vast majority of the people did not vote for the parties in power? In the USA, where the so-called democrats have continued to back President Mubarak because of their determination not to offend the might of Israel?
The hypocrisy of the West is as alarming as the absolutism of the fundamentalists. Wedging a piece of paper between them is sometimes a little difficult because there is a certain amount of fundamentalism, or the belief that they are right and all others are wrong, in the Western leaders who espouse their form of democracy to be THE way.
Has it really worked for us?
Yesterday once more, I caught a glimpse of a piece of writing that said those who were campaigning for electoral reform were going to align their message of hope to the fact that the Royal nuptials were taking place a few days before the referendum.
Dear Egyptians, you do well to ponder on this bizarre anachronism and unfathomable contradiction!
Electoral reform and the development of a real, working, democratic constitution in this country cannot possibly happen when we still have the absurdity of a so-called constitutional monarchy with an unelected second chamber of has-beens and priests.
What on earth would the young Egyptians see as workable in our system?
Apparently, we are all going to be smiling away at the end of April because our beloved young man, he – the offspring of that poor put upon Diana, is going to walk up the ancient aisle of Westminster Abbey to marry his university sweetheart. This, according to those in favour of AP, needs to be seized upon as the “feel good factor” subsumes the nation.
How? How? How can these two events be put together so crudely when the very fact that we have a monarchy makes a complete laughing stock of our alleged democracy? How can those in favour of electoral reform possibly want to align themselves with an archaic institution that is standing in the way of true democracy and perpetuates the myth that some people and some families deserve the wealth of the nation by default of their birth?
As I said, Egyptians beware!
So perhaps my vision of a campsite in the middle of Parliament Square should be realised by those who really believe in democracy and are craving for some real change in the constitution, and maybe we should consider that we take to the streets to have our voice heard at, say Friday 29th April?
I wonder how much democracy we would see taking place in this country if such a thing was organised?
But then I always was a dreamer.
No comments:
Post a Comment