Brett Keegan
Staff Writer
Campaign posters laced with Arabic script sailed into gutters, trampled by dog paws and stray cats picking for scraps. Red, white and black ringed trees and utility poles, faded from a year in Cairo sun. Around every corner, I found remains of revolution and the first free election in Egypt’s history.
There to teach English, I learned about democracy.
Before protests from the January Revolution forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign Feb. 2011, he had held power since October 1981, despite charges of corruption and police brutality.
“We could vote, but it didn’t matter,” one of my students told me when we talked about elections under Mubarak. “It wasn’t a real vote.”
The Revolution has pitched Egypt, the most populated country in the Middle East, into a year of profound change. This past May, Egypt had its first free presidential elections. America’s revolution took place in 1788—a 224-year gap.
I arrived just as the run-off elections took place between Omar Shafiq and Mohammed Morsi. During election weekend, armed guards peppered street corners, citizens lined schools to vote, and some held up fingers dyed black to flaunt their civic duty. Others refused to vote or voided ballots—a deliberate choice.
Throughout my one-month stay, I got a new appreciation for justice and freedom. They weren’t abstracts peppered in speeches, ideals bannered on flags, or terms that students memorize. I talked to the friends and siblings of people who had camped for days in Tahrir Square, enduring rubber bullets and threats, for freedom.
We’ve had about 224 years of democracy. They’ve had less than two, a fledgling, fragile start. Still, I think they had the right idea.
I got cynical watching the debate on Tuesday. Both candidates pirouetted past issues with smiles and smooth words. They repeated the sound bites. They spoke of values — like freedom — and talked about children and small businesses with a surface of sincerity. Like ads on repeat, they talked on.
I scanned the flood of Facebook updates and Tweets, glanced at polls and read the rhetoric of pundits from news sites. Echoes of the same cynicism resonated. As one Facebook post read, “Both sides just said what their followers wanted to hear. Liberals are going to blindly claim Obama won, conservatives Romney. This whole thing’s hopeless.” Or as another observer told me, “It’s like choosing between Pepsi and Coke.”
The same apathy and cynicism has held throughout the election. I’ve added to it. But like most generalizations, there are exceptions—some holding tight to their party, others calmly engaged.
Still, this year feels worse than others. Something gnaws at me. Hate ads, the modern worship of adroit images and the gymnast-like polish of candidates dodging questions irk me. They’re problems, but they’re old problems. During the 1800 election, for example, opponents burned effigies of Jefferson, and Harrison’s log cabin campaign of 1840 was all image.
I’d rather have skepticism than blind naivety.
But I’m terrified that we’ve had our rose-tinted glasses broken and blame the system. As Egyptians find their voice amid flaws, we struggle with ours. We forget what efficacy and freedom truly are. Our votes’ value fades. We think we make no difference. It’s all Coke and Pepsi from now on, no matter what.
But if there are men and women willing to fight and die — as our founders did — to have the same rights we have today, there must be some value to them. If we must endure a new view of politics permeated with the gray grit of realism, so be it.
But we can’t opt out. Now, more than ever, we must rediscover what our democracy means to us. Is it a lie? A game? Another marketplace?
Or, is it still something worth loving? Worth fighting for? Perhaps it’s still a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
If not, what is it?
keeganbe09@bonaventure.edu
