CAIRO
Spring may be weeks away, but for Egyptians it is already here.
It arrived when President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down after 31 years, triggering euphoria not seen here since the 1952 coup that ended the monarchy.
Like everything Egyptian, this political spring is a jumble of contradictions.
While dozens of lawsuits charge the police with brutality and corruption, many policemen are on strike with placards reading: We, too, were victims of the police state!
With the collapse of the administrative hierarchy and the disappearance of “deciders,” the all-powerful bureaucrats who kept the oversized machine going, few government offices are operating.
With the president, vice president and prime minister kicked out, teahouses are full of speculation about who will be next in this political version of Ten Little Indians.
Everywhere people are talking about the “new Egypt,” which is going to be a model for the “developing world.” But there is little agreement on what this new Egypt might look like.
Five men with different visions stand out.
The first is Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi, the defense minister — who, as chairman of the Supreme Military Council, is the de facto interim head of state.
Known as a soldier with few words, Tantawi remains an unknown quantity. Those close to him say he never dreamt of a political career; now that fate has propelled him into politics, he wants to preside over a smooth transition from an autocratic regime to a democratic one.
“Remember that he is 76,” says a retired general with close ties with Tantawi. “Too late to start a career as an autocrat.”
Tantawi can count on support from millions of Egyptians whose livelihood comes from the parallel economy run by the military.
According to the retired general, all that Tantawi wants to do is to prevent “the revolution from going too far and becoming the enemy of itself.”
Others, however, believe that Tantawi and other senior generals are trying to perpetuate the military regime created by the 1952 coup. “How could a general of a military regime become the father of a modern democracy?” asks Hassan Ibrahim, a lawyer.
The second vision belongs to Ayman Nour, a human-rights activist who had the guts to challenge Mubarak in a presidential election and paid for it by ending up in prison.
Nour and the small party he founded had a minimalist program: All they wanted was for the regime to respect its own Constitution. The Tahrir Square revolution went beyond that by demanding regime change.
Nour, and a large segment of Egyptian opinion, acknowledge that regime change has become inevitable but still hope to move toward it in “in a responsible manner.”
The next vision is symbolized by Wael Ghonim, the young Google manager whose brief imprisonment by Mubarak helped re-launch the “revolution” when it appeared to be running out of steam. He and many in his generation speak of a “Mediterranean future” for Egypt.
“Rather than looking to the medieval Arabian space in the East, new Egypt should look to Europe and reclaim its place in its natural habitat, which is the Mediterranean,” he says.
This vision appeals to millions of Egyptians who recall the times when their country was a melting pot of different civilizations, admired for its diversity and tolerance. After 1952, the army’s pan-Arab ideology ended all that.
The fourth vision is represented by Muhammad Badi’e, the “supreme guide” of the Muslim Brotherhood. Badi’e talks of “persuading the Egyptians to return to Islamic values.” He insists he does not want something like the regime created by mullahs in Iran. In Iran, he claims, the mullahs use the power of the government to impose their vision of Islam on society. He wants Egypt to become an Islamic society before it creates an Islamic government.
Opponents of the Brotherhood claim that this moderate talk is designed to hide the group’s hidden agenda.
They may have a point, for the fifth vision is represented by Kamal al-Halbawi — another Muslim Brotherhood leader.
This week, al-Halbawi became the first Brotherhood leader to visit Tehran. There, he announced that he wanted for Egypt what Iran has today: “a true Islamic state.”
“Egypt and the world of Islam as a whole need leaders like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” he said in a speech.
Egypt, he said, should join “a new world order with Iran and Venezuela plus Hezbollah and Hamas to chase away the Americans. . . .
“Every night when I go to bed, I pray to wake up the next day to see Israel is wiped off the map,” the Brotherhood leader said.
In Egypt, forcing Mubarak out may have been the easy part. The difficult part is just getting under way.