But the euphoric celebration in Egypt masked the undisputable reality that the Egyptian Army had seized power in a coup after 18 days of street uprising by the Egyptian people from all walks of life, demanding an end to 30 years of Mubarak’s authoritarian rule.

The announcement on state television took only 30 seconds. Vice President Omar Suleiman, former intelligence chief of Mubarak, said the latter “has decided to give up the office of the president of the republic and has instructed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to manage the affairs of the country.” In that fleeting minute, the 30-year Mubarak dictatorship passed into history.

The end came less than a day after Mubarak enraged protesters by insisting he would not step down despite widespread expectations that he was about to resign. He himself did not pronounce the demise of his regime. He had been flown by the military to his residence in the Red Sea resort of the Sharm el-Sheikh in a relatively bloodless coup backed by the people in the streets. The Army responded to the overwhelming demands for change from the streets.

Mubarak transferred power to the military council (read: junta) which in effect runs the country under martial law powers. His resignation ignited a wave of celebration in which people danced and partied in the streets, fraternized with soldiers they hailed as their liberator, waved Egyptian flags, hoisted their children above their heads; fireworks blazed, cars honked (in our language, noise barrage).

Echoes of EDSA

The sea of humanity that flooded Tahrir Square triumphantly chanted: “We have brought down a regime. We are Egypt. We have taken back our country.”

They were echoes of EDSA but the similarities with Tahrir Square end there. The Egyptian revolution was certainly not mimicking EDSA.

True, Marcos, his family, and cohorts fled to Honolulu, courtesy of the US Air Force, four days after the military mutiny broke out at Camp Aguinaldo on Feb. 22, 1986. It took shorter for EDSA to reach a climax when Cory Aquino, a civilian opposition leader, was sworn in as President on Feb. 25 at Club Filipino.

President Benigno Aquino III hailed the Egyptian revolution with an insipid statement marked by unrelieved banality undeserving of preservation in the Malacañang archives.

He said: “Egypt’s people power transition shows that the aspirations for a more free and fair society are universal. As Filipinos did in 1986, Egyptians must now begin the work of rebuilding their institutions. We stand in solidarity with Egypt and all people who long for peaceful and meaningful change.”

The transition from Mubarak to the Egyptian military council was a shift from a military-dominated government. (Mubarak was an Air Force pilot who was appointed vice president by Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in October 1981 on stage during an annual military parade.)

Acted on people’s cry

For 60 years, Egypt has been ruled by a military dictatorship. In the 1952 revolution, the military staged a coup against King Farouk. A young Col. Gamal Abdul Nasser backed the coup. He became president after deposing his boss, General Naguib. Since Nasser, Egypt has had only two presidents, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.

More powerful a force for political change than the Philippine military, the Egyptian Army has been the pivotal institution for regime change in Egypt, which occupies a strategic position in the Middle East.

According to a BBC News report, the Army moved to remove Mubarak when the military leadership realized that cracks were starting to appear in the Army’s structure. Many junior officers, ordinary soldiers, sided with the demonstrators.

The Washington Post reported that the intransigence of Mubarak to stay in power not only enraged the protesters, but it also put the military in a difficult predicament—stuck between the demands of the demonstrators and a president determined to cling to power.

As the standoff hardened, demonstrators demanded on Thursday, “where is the Egyptian military?” After Mubarak’s ouster on Friday, one demonstrator said, the military intervention was not a coup. “This is them consenting to the people’s demand.”

A leap to unknown

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces pledged to enact a smooth transition to civilian rule, and to hand power to an elected, civilian government in a statement that was vague on how long the transition would take and did not spell out the concrete steps to toward a civilian government.

A senior Army officer announced on state television the military “will guarantee the peaceful transition of power in the framework of a free democratic system which allows an elected, civilian power to govern the country to build a democratic, free state.”

The coup was a leap to the unknown. The country is virtually run by a junta led by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak’s defense minister. Behind the euphoria over the exit of Mubarak, there are now doubts over how far the Army was ready to permit democracy.

By contrast, in the EDSA transition, a large segment of the Armed Forces revolted against Marcos. The military chain of command was broken. Important military services—the Philippine Constabulary and the Air Force, and some of the Marines—disobeyed orders by Marcos’ chief of staff, Gen. Fabian Ver, to put down the revolt centered at the Constabulary headquarters at Camp Crame.

No leader in Egypt

Unlike in Egypt, the opposition to the Marcos regime and the “people power” in the streets had a leadership around which to rally—the group led by Cory Aquino. The military rebels handed over power not out of magnanimity but because they were protected by the masses and the military saw the overwhelming manifestation in the streets to depose Marcos and replace him with civilian leaders—not with another dictatorship led by soldiers.

The Egyptian revolution had no leadership option to replace Mubarak. It had no central and unified leadership. Although it had a broadly based and multiclass constituency, the Egyptian people power constituency was welded by only one issue—the demand for the immediate resignation of Mubarak.

The EDSA revolution had a political infrastructure on which to rebuild Philippine democracy with a civilian leadership. Egypt has to fall back on a military-based authoritarian structure led by military officers. This contrast resulted in a less disruptive and smoother transition to democracy in the Philippines.

The long-term outcome of this route through people power is still debatable. This turbulent transition—marked by series of military coup attempts in 24 years—cannot be a model for Egypt’s tour de force to democracy.

Armando Doronilla, Phil. Daily Inquirer