COMMENT: EGYPT HAS MORE TO FEAR FROM THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION THAN THE IRANIAN ONE

The hawkish right have been predictably fear-mongering about the influence of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, feverishly underlining links (correct and incorrect) between them and Palestine's Hamas and letting panicked armchair commentators picture a descent into feudal-barbarism, sectarian anarchy and damnation-spewing demagoguery. The usual barometers of knee-jerk idiocy have been pushing the idea that the greatest threat to Egypt now will come from its religious extremists, that their unseating of the 'stable', Western-backed, dictator-we-can-do-lunch-with Hosni Mubarak will lead to an Iranian-style scenario where the revolution will be co-opted by an aggressive minority looking to push their own aggressive ideology onto the country.

That's a reasonable concern, obviously. Though the Muslim Brotherhood are far from being able to pull the largest share of votes when an election comes, if it comes – both Mussolini's blackshirt fascists and Lenin's Bolsheviks were niche forces within an regime's opposition, they just shouted the loudest and were prepared to bully, threaten, murder, raconteur and coerce their way to the top when the revolution came. The Muslim Brotherhood's history of indiscriminate violence makes this seem perfectly reasonable, but now the cameras have turned from Tahrir Square to whatever the next flashpoint is in this glossy rolling news soap opera, the greatest threat to emerging democracy in Egypt looks far less exciting. It looks like more of the same.

Romania is still waiting for the last of the old guard to be rotated out of the system and for the old problems and inequalities within Romania's mildewy, Soviet-style apparatus to finally be addressed, yet, like Egypt, history will record the toppling of a dictator as the end of the old era and the beginning of a bright new one. As soon as Mubarak stood down on February 11, the media behaved as though this was fait accompli for democracy, reporting news of a governing military council holding the fort until the September election with a straight face. Now the army, echoing the running street battles of its Romanian counterpart, is happily closing down protests in concert with the same police officer's who three days before were looting museums and stripping out of their fatigues to pose as pro-Mubarak counter-protestors.

The army, custodians of both Mubarak's regime and Ceausescu's regime in Romania, are traditional friends of autocracy. Autocracy keeps them well funded, allows them to bloat their ranks and wages, keeps them away from the civilian oversight that curtails their benefits, and a natural synthesis between their styles of people management provides a nice little retirement option in politics for generals who've run out of meaningless medals to accumulate. Like Romania, the Egyptian army presented itself as a politically neutral force of patriots representing the will of the people, and like Romania, the Egyptian army were at the centre of the old regime and saw it in their best interests to get shot of an unpopular dictator and his oppressive police state as quickly as possible in order to preserve the status quo. To quote Don Tancredi in 'The Leopard', di Lampedusa's study of the crumbling aristocracy in revolutionary Sicily, “Things have to change so they can stay the same.”

Prior to entering politics, Hosni Mubarak was a career officer in the Egyptian air force and his temporary replacement as executive head, is Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, an officer since 1956 and Minister of Defence since 1991 – long thought a possible contender to replace Mubarak, it'll be no surprise if he chooses to run for election in September, assuming an election is even held. Ceausescu (who was Deputy Minister of the Armed Forces under his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej) was offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the military and by conservative forces within the Communist Party, who since 1990 have accounted for all three presidents, a good number of prime ministers and, along with former agents of the hated, all pervasive Securitate secret police, much of the cabinet and civil service, and have been understandably hesitant about reform that would change the mechanisms of their power structure and personal wealth. Though change has come to Romania, it took at least a decade and it came largely in spite of the politicians who made it possible, and it's ongoing.


There are plenty of superficial similarities between Hosni Mubarak and Nicolae Ceausescu, their personal corruption and their stodgy, dated rhetoric, but the real parallel is in how a popular uprising was subtly stage-managed by the army and how forces at the heart of the old regime are now active within the new one, and how the world confused a single newsworthy act, the toppling of a dictator, as being the tidy and obliging conclusion to a whizz-bang television feast. In the 2004 election, current Romanian president Traian Băsescu, himself once part of Ceausescu's government at a senior level, commented in a moment of self-awareness, "You know what Romania's greatest curse is right now? It's that Romanians have to choose between two former Communist Party members."

That, above all the alarmist threats of jihadis, ayatollahs and anarchy, is the worst thing that could happen to Egypt – another two decades of autocratic stagnation disguised as a transition to democracy.