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13 February 2011 By Saeed
Qureshi It is a momentous day for the
people of
Egypt.
This unforgettable day of deliverance, dawned with the
emancipation of the Egyptian nation from an oppressive
regime, would be remembered as an epic and folklore to
be sung by their future generations. With their blood
and sacrifices, the traumatized people of Egypt have
got themselves liberated from the tyranny and
enslavement of a modern day Pharaoh. With the torrential zeal and an
unyielding spirit, the people of Egypt led by the
youth have inscribed a luminous page of national
liberation from the yoke of a tyrant who brooked no
mercy or honor for their own countrymen. He had set
the abominable record of cronyism, greed and
repression that equate him with the monstrous lot of
Hitler,
Pol
Pot, Pinochet and medieval merciless
dynastic potentates. Under the mask of democracy,
Hosni
Mubarak ruled his nation with an iron
hand and with a diabolic ferocity that was worse than
a naked dictatorship. His democracy was so glaringly
fraudulent as to pale the worst of autocracy. He
governed his country with farce, fraud and forgery and
maintained his grip on power with absolute
ruthlessness. The army, the, intelligence network, the
secret Service, the rich plutocrats, the rapacious
oligarchs, the filthily corrupt bureaucrats and
avaricious aristocracy were all in league and behind
the arch villain in an unabashed loot and plunder and
enslavement of their great nation. The Egyptian society during three
decades of Mubarak's stifling lordship scaled down
from a glorified self respecting country to the one
surviving on charity and foreign aid for a loathsome
subservience to the foreign dictates and ambitions.
With the dependence on foreign alms, aid and
mismanagement, while the people became more
impoverished, the elitist classes including the army
generals amassed tons of wealth. The ill-gotten
fortune of the deposed president alone is estimated to
be as high as 70 billion dollars. A new resplendent era of openness
and emancipation seems to be in sight due to the
breathtaking heroism and supreme sacrifices and a
relentless struggle waged by all section of Egyptian
society. This glowing example for indigenous liberty
and national salvation would serve as a glorious model
worth emulating for such societies where alienated
autocracies and totalitarianism still prevail. The people of Egypt has imparted
a phenomenal lesson to the world at large that once a
fettered nation determines to take off its fetters and
shake off its fear, it can topple and defeat even the
most diabolic rulers. Leaving aside the Bolshevik and
Iranian revolutions, the Egyptian uprising against a
deceitful, mercenary head of state and to defy his
brutal apparatus for harassing and subduing the people
is a magnificent epitome that was unimaginable until
the upheaval of the Tunisian Seismic cataclysm. This
is how the torch of freedom and flame of national
emancipation and employment moves from one oppressed
nation to another. Hosni Mubarak has been swept away
by the torrent of change that is ingrained in the
scheme of things and in the immutable principle of
change in nature. He has been thrown into the dustbin
of history with a backlog of treachery and disgrace.
He has gone with the wind never to harass a nation
again that has the glorious legacy of civilization and
amazing culture. Such tyrants whether tin pot or
overbearing have appeared in various societies but
ultimately disappeared with loathsome memories of
their dark legacies and treasonous conduct. Only those
are charitably, fondly and respectfully remembered who
were kind and caring and patriotic and who served
their communities and nations with selflessness,
honesty and dedication. Mubarak will not find any kind
words in the history books. He would be loathed as an
illegitimate, corrupt, brutal, treasonous dictator, a
heartless aggressor and a stooge who served other
nations than his own people. He was a puppet, a crony,
a barbaric autocrat, a kind of quisling promoting
foreign interests. Admirably the United States has
firmly stood on the right side of the history. That is
also a defining moment for America as it is now
disowning the dictators and owing the people. It is
highly commendable that America under president Obama
has supported the rightful crusade of the oppressed
and disempowered people of Egypt against a barbarous
and nauseating system run by a heartless crook whose
atrocities against his people were voluminous and
endless. There is no gainsaying that if it were not
due to United States emphatic calls to the
Egyptian army and unrelenting pressure
on the Egyptian strongman, the change for a transition
would still have remained elusive. With the exit of Mubarak from the
political landscape of Egypt, a country so daringly
and rapaciously governed by him, the march towards the
establishment of a truly pluralistic democratic order
must continue and resolutely supported by United
States and the world at large. If the stupendous
change in Egypt wrought with an unprecedented
movement, brings about mere change of faces then it
would be a betrayal and a fraud that must be prevented
to happen. The writer is a Dallas-based journalist and a
former diplomat. Email: qureshisa2003@ yahoo.com |
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