Free Custom «Revolution in Egypt» Essay Paper

Introduction

Many countries in the world have gone through revolution with the aim of making life better for its citizens. Many leaders on the other hand tend to stick to power for a long time making her citizens feel other people should also be given a chance to rule with a belief that the misery they go through is as a result of poor and dictatorial leadership. Once such revolution take place, it shows how the citizens have lost hope with the current leadership, making them believe any change of leaders will make their life better. As the cost of living get higher, most of a countries populace more often than not finds it demanding to meet the ever increasing demands of life and these enhances their misery and hard economic times, making them not to comfortably cope with the daily challenges of life. In most cases, revolution is accelerated by lack of fair distribution of wealth among the citizens, creating a gap between the haves and don't haves. Many of the countries that have experienced revolution have cited the increased poverty levels which aggravate their aggression to remove the current leadership, believing by doing so, their miseries will be better tackled. This paper thus will look at revolution in Egypt, causes and the impacts to the country's population.

Causes of revolution

Revolution is described as the fundamental change of power or structures of governance that normally takes a short time to happen. As put forth by Aristotle, revolution can be of two types. One type looks and the complete change of one constitution to another and the second one looks and modification of the existing constitution to meet the current needs of the people. In regard to Aristotle's view of politics, he views politicians as craftsmen who should tailor make constitution which should serve the people with a focus to mutual gain or satisfaction of the citizens. He advocated for regular review of the constitution and these factors can be said to have lacked in Mubarak's governance. He further argues that people who cannot govern themselves need to be governed, implying there should be a leader to govern them. Most of Aristotle's point would work well in this era where people look at politicians as being there for the interest of those who elected them and not for their own personal gains. In most cases, revolution occurs when people feel some of their issues are not well attended despite having presented them to relevant authorities.

On the other hand, Machiavelli believed in manipulation of citizens for easier governance. He believed when citizens are poor, it becomes easier to rule them which have been opposed by many scholars and this can be confirmed to what happened in Egypt. The main types of revolution revolve around political and social structures. Political revolution is geared towards bringing into place effective governance whereas social revolution attempts to strengthen the social structures within the community and bringing equity to the people. Looking at the recent revolution that has continued to take place in Egypt, it will be prudent to mention that the citizens were interested with complete change of the governance, associating the government with its problems. Egypt is associated with the earliest form of civilization in the world. The country is suitable for agricultural activities and also blessed with natural resources like gas and oil. Despite the country having a vast of resources, their populaces have continued to suffer from poverty, thereby not understanding how they can continue to suffer when there are plenty of resources in their country. Being Arabic dominated country; Egypt has not been spared from the current waves of revolution that is affecting most of Islamic dominated countries including Libya and Tunisia.

Mubarak, who came into power in 1981 after assassination of the then president of Egypt Anwar Sadat as he was inspecting a parade, was then the vice president of that country. Mubarak was the longest serving president in Egypt and despite having served for many years; the citizens have continued to experience economic turmoil during his reign. For him to remain in power for the many years he has, he has been mainly done so by making sure the constitution is changed to provide for his qualification as well as increasing the presidential powers. Most leaders in the world from time of immemorial have tried to do so and since it is human innate behavior to aspire for the best. On the other hand, such actions only leaves citizens disgruntled and blames the government for any miseries they might be going through

Causes of Egypt revolution

One of the major causes of Egypt's revolution was the hard economic time the citizens were facing. Despite of the country having most of natural resources including iron ore, natural gas, oil and fluorspar,  the sales accrued from these products was not enjoyed by the vast of the majority. It is estimated that most of its population lives on merely 2 U.S dollars per day which is quite ironical considering the number of natural resources in that country. Before revolution started, most political leaders sighted inequity of resources within the country whereby massive corruption and police brutality and unjustifiable imprisonment to people who appeared as a threat to him being in power, were the order of the day. The gap between the rich and the poor was so big such that some of the Mubarak supporters were displayed as having big shares in the country's investments, making the don't have perceive a foul play by the government in extending impunity within the country at the expense of those who did not have political alignment with the serving government. Apart from the meager corruption, the Mubarak governance has been associated with suppressing the democracy in the country.

Immediately Mubarak rose to power, he imposed the rule of emergency which he had been frequently using for his own gain. He had been curtailing freedom of media by making sure nothing outside his interest could be printed and neither broadcasted to the public. Many scholars believe in relevancy of media in bringing desirable change and putting pressure to a government in enhancing service delivery to its citizen. These factors made citizens feel enough was enough and they plotted to hold massive demonstration to bring to an end all the misdeeds they associated with Mubarak's governance with the hope of having a better tomorrow. Most countries that allow media to exercise their freedom have achieved a number of benefits since it acts as a catalyst for people to do the right things or else be mud slung by the media about their dirty deeds. This means when Mubarak failed to accord the necessary freedom to the media, him and his government were able to run government the way they wanted with little fear of her citizen getting a glimpse of the wrong things they were doing.

Time line for evolution

Egyptians having been feed up by the leadership of President Mubarak, a protest was organized to demonstrate against the surging levels of poverty, high levels of impunity and corruption and unemployment to many citizens who had the qualifications but could still not get employed. They failed to understand why they continued to thrive in poverty when their country was blessed with many natural resources and which were fetching great income to their country.

25^th of January 2011 will remain an important day to many Egyptians since it is the day that marked the beginning of their revolution. Revolution being as old as mankind, it is aggravated by many factors depending on what citizens puts as a priority to themselves. To mobilize great numbers, internet was used widely to encourage citizens to come in large numbers to demonstrate against the governance of President Mubarak. Since there lacked media freedom, internet became the best tool to reach big numbers. Though Mubarak failed to foresee this as being the biggest move to oust him out of power, he directed police to disrupt the demonstrators, thinking his tactics would work. The clash between the police and demonstrators left a number of people dead and several injured. This however did not stop them from demonstrating and instead, it gave the demonstrators more will and enthusiasm to bring to an end the dictatorial leadership that cared less for its own populace. Egyptians were truly fed up by the Mubarak's governance and continued with their demonstration despite facing brutality from the police (Benjamin, 2011).

After non relenting citizens continued with their demonstrations, despite being harassed by police officers, the police at last recognized the rights of peaceful demonstrations to the citizens, after which, the citizens managed to demonstrate without being harassed by the police. It was the resulting pressure from the citizens that made Mubarak to heed to citizens demand and agreed to relinquish some of his powers and promised not to run during the September elections (Egypt, 2011). This was a great achievement to demonstrators since they showed they have powers to determine their destiny. This will act as a learning lesson more so with African leaders whereby some have been known to stick to power, rig elections despite the will of the majority. Also it is a clear indication that elected leaders should aspire to serve people well, enhance economic growth and advocate for democracy to avoid disgruntled citizens.