Sean Rocha

Tracking how the Egyptian government is doing

The strange thing about Egypt before the revolution was that everything down to the price of bread was political but in a very real sense there were no politics: no policy debate, no (real) competition for seats or positions of power, and no public participation whatsoever in shaping the country’s future.  The grand ambition for many who joined the revolution was simply to normalize Egyptian political life: no utopia this, it was more about having the chance to complain about all the things that citizens get to complain about in functioning democracies instead of sitting silent because it doesn’t matter what you think anyway.  One excellent indicator of the change since the revolution: the Morsi Meter, which tracks how the new Egyptian president is faring in fulfilling his campaign promises.  You can dispute the methodology here, but when was the last time Mubarak made a campaign promise that anyone thought he would keep — much less actually challenged him to keep it?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2012 at 1:42 pm. It is filed under That is Genius and tagged with Cairo, Egypt, Middle East, Morsi, North Africa, politics, revolution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.