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The January 25 Revolution, as Egyptians call it, is the fourth Egyptian revolution in the last 130 years.\u00a0 The modern Egyptian national movement has consistently sought three goals: self-government in the basic sense of allowing Egyptians to be in charge of public offices; independence in the international community and effective domestic sovereignty, in particular with regard to the national economy and the ability to secure a more egalitarian distribution of national wealth and income; and governmental accountability to the people of Egypt.\u00a0 While Egypt\u2019s prior revolutions secured, to a certain extent, the first two goals, contradictions between the desire for national independence and the desire for democracy ultimately led to the Free Officers\u2019 Revolution of 1952.\u00a0 The Egyptian people discovered, however, that in the absence of internal democracy, it was impossible to preserve the gains of the previous revolutions.\u00a0 The January 25 Revolution therefore affirmed the centrality of democracy to the Egyptian national movement, not just as a utopian goal\u2014one whose practical implementation would be indefinitely deferred\u2014but rather as the foundation for a modern, independent, and prosperous Egypt.<\/span><\/p>\n The Mubarak regime was the last breath of the Free Officers\u2019 Revolution.\u00a0 The Mubarak regime systematically stifled the development and maturity of democratic and egalitarian norms which are immanent in Egypt\u2019s modern legal and political history, even as the regime paid increasingly grotesque lip service to democratic forms.\u00a0 The spread of corruption and torture represented the grossest and most palpable failures of the regime to live up to the aspirations of the Egyptian state: Egyptian law prohibited both financial corruption[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> and torture,[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> yet Mubarak used his powers under the Constitution of 1971 to subvert the enforcement of Egyptian law in order to benefit himself, his family, and their allies.\u00a0 It is not surprising, then, that eliminating torture and public corruption were issues that galvanized Egyptians during the January 25 Revolution.\u00a0 With the resignation of Mubarak on February 11, 2011, Egyptians have now turned their attention to how the Egyptian state can recover public property from the possession of corrupt officials of the ancien regime<\/em>.[3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n A quick glance at poverty in Egypt explains why corruption was such a central concern of the January 25 Revolution. In the early 1990s, Egypt began to implement structural adjustment reforms to its economy at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (\u201cIMF\u201d), and the Egyptian state embarked on a campaign of privatization of state-owned firms combined with a substantial reduction in the state-provided safety net and state investments in education and health.\u00a0 As a result, and despite the generally high marks Egypt received from the IMF, the rate of Egyptians living on less than $2 per day remained at a stubbornly high 20%, and real wages for the working class stagnated.[4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Benefits of growth during the Mubarak era generally went almost exclusively to those sectors of Egypt that were already relatively well-off, and the class of crony capitalists close to the regime especially benefitted.[5]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Consequently, both the working classes and the upwardly-mobile but politically disconnected professional middle classes could easily unite behind a revolution committed to the elimination of public corruption. The working class blamed the public sector\u2019s failures on the corruption of Mubarak cronies who were appointed as managers of state-owned firms. On the other hand, the upwardly mobile professional classes could identify corruption as a primary cause holding back Egypt\u2019s international competitiveness and an immediate threat to the value of their greatest asset\u2014their human capital.<\/p>\n The widely held view that the corruption of the Mubarak regime was debilitating Egypt\u2019s ability to compete internationally also reinforced the deep desire for a genuine system of democratic accountability[6]<\/sup><\/a>: <\/sup> Egyptian law already prohibited financial corruption of public officials, but Mubarak\u2019s presidential powers effectively insulated himself and others from the reach of Egypt\u2019s otherwise broad set of anti-corruption laws. . . .<\/p>\n Read full article (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> See, e.g.<\/em>, Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt, 11 Sept. 1971, as amended<\/em>, May 22, 1980, May 25, 2005, March 26, 2007, March 30, 2011, art. 95 [hereinafter Egypt Constitution]; Law No. 62 of 1975 (Illegal Profit-Making) Al-Jarida Al-Rasmiyya<\/em>, 7 July 1975 (Egypt); Law No. 38 of 1972 (The People\u2019s Assembly, as amended by Law No. 175 of 2005) Al-Jarida Al-Rasmiyya<\/em>, 28 Sept. 1972 (Egypt), arts. 23\u201324; see also<\/em> Transparency Int\u2019l <\/em>National Integrity System Study, Egypt 2009 40\u201343, 54\u201356 (2009), available at <\/em>http:\/\/www.transparency.org\/content\/download\/50747\/812368 [hereinafter 2009 Transparency Int\u2019l Study] (providing a detailed overview of Egyptian law\u2019s extensive prohibitions against public official corruption).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/a> In 1986, Egypt acceded to the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100-20, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85, and the treaty went into effect in 1987.\u00a0 See<\/em> Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment: Egypt<\/em>, U.N. Office of the High Comm\u2019r for Human Rights, Treaty Bodies Database, http:\/\/www.unhchr.ch\/tbs\/doc.nsf\/22b020de61f10ba0c1256a2a0027ba1e\/80256404004ff315c125638b005df964?OpenDocument (last visited Mar. 8, 2011). Under the Egyptian Constitution, treaties, once ratified have immediate effect in the domestic legal system. Egypt Constitution, supra<\/em> note 1, art. 151.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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