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The former president may have gone, but the system that kept him in power is still in place, writes Bahieddin Hassan
On 11 February, the dictator fell. But he did not take the dictatorial regime down with him. The textbook police state which he built up over the years, and that wasn't much different from that of Tunisia, is still with us.
Mubarak is gone, and key members of his regime are being investigated for possible crimes ranging from corruption to human-rights violations and mismanagement. Yet, this does not mean that the mechanisms and underpinnings of the despotic police state have disappeared. Mubarak is down, but not Mubarakism.
The main task facing us now is to dismantle the pillars of this police state and to lay the foundations of a secular and democratic regime that respects human rights. In order to do this, we need to remove the constitutional and legislative pillars that the previous regime used to survive and to masquerade at being "legitimate". We must dismantle the institutions and organisations that the regime used in order to survive and to defeat and debilitate its opponents.
Despotic regimes in Egypt have drawn their strength from the constitutions that have been in place since the 1952 revolution, all of which give the executive branch of government supremacy over the judicial and legislative branches. These constitutions have granted the president -- irrespective of who he may have been -- absolute power unfettered by accountability.
What is needed now is to scrap the existing constitution and not to amend it. No amendments, however extensive, would be enough to salvage it because the philosophy and spirit of the constitution are diametrically opposed to democratic values and human rights. The present constitution can only encourage despotism.
The most important institution, indeed the mainstay, of the police state in Egypt has undoubtedly been the State Security Service, an organisation that dominated every aspect of life in the country. Any delay in dissolving this body means that the revolution has only succeeded in replacing one head with another, while keeping in place the tentacles that suffocated civil and political liberties in the country and led to extensive human-rights violations, including torture, abduction and assassination.
Egypt does not need presidential or parliamentary elections right away. What it needs instead is for the political and legislative environment to be changed completely. Unless this is done, the same corrupt environment that produced one of the worst parliaments in Egyptian history will stifle the birth of new institutions, institutions that match the spirit of the 25 January Revolution.
Under the current laws, the young political groups that led the 25 January Revolution against the wishes of the regime, and also against the wishes of the traditional opposition parties, are considered to be illegal. Meanwhile, those political parties that did not boycott last year's rigged elections and that refused to take part in the Day of Anger are considered legitimate.
Most of Egypt's current opposition parties belong politically and structurally to Mubarakism, and they have nothing to do with the spirit, values and demands of the 25 January Revolution.
What we need during this transitional phase are far-reaching constitutional and legislative reforms that will open the door to the forces and currents that launched the 25 January Revolution, allowing them to take part in paving the way to a democratic secular state and one that respects human rights.
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Unless this is done, we run the risk of handing the country over either to neo-Mubarakism or to the Islamists.
The writer is director of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1035/op213.htm