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The government killjoys struck early and with brutal efficiency.
By midday Monday, they had erased hours upon hours worth of graffiti which had been painstakingly created by some of Cairo’s best street artists.
Most of the murals they wanted to expunge – a chain of pro-revolutionary images along the walls of the American University in Cairo’s Downtown campus – survived unscathed after an intervention from angry bystanders.
One, however, did not – a wonderfully provocative painting depicting the warped face of a man who was half-Hosni Mubarak and half-Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, the current leader of Egypt.
The subtext of the painting was clear. Hosni Mubarak might be gone, but his spirit remains in the form of Egypt’s military supremo; a stubborn ghost lurking in the shadows of the revolutionary feast.
Hosni Mubarak stayed in power for 30 years, presiding over his corrupt kleptocracy from a throne of bayonets.
For his part, Field Marshall Tantawi has rule Egypt as head of the Military Council for a little over a year. He and his colleagues have promised to hand over power once a new President is elected, but many are understandably asking whether they can be trusted to remain true to their word?
On Wednesday Egyptians will head to the ballot boxes for what will be a genuinely historic election – an opportunity to vote in the first democratic presidential poll in the nation’s history.
Travelling up and down the country, there is no doubting how enthusiastically voters are taking to their new task.
From Upper Egypt to the industrial heartland of the Delta, tens of thousands of people have turned up to rallies and campaign meetings to hear the touring candidates make their pitches.
This in itself has been extraordinary. Prior to the 2005 presidential election, when Hosni Mubarak won a discredited poll with more than 80 per cent of the vote, no election for the top job had ever been contested.
Compare that to the situation in Egypt over recent weeks, with a panoply of different candidates from all colours of the political spectrum slugging it out for the presidency.
Egyptians have witnessed unprecedented televised debates, hundreds of town square speeches and streets erupting in a riot of competing campaign posters.
But skeptics beg a moment’s reflection. The so-called Egyptian Revolution might now have its own extensive Wikipedia entry, but there has been no storming of the Bastille; Mubarak may be gone, but his Interior Ministry is still standing. Furthermore, most of the miscreants from his ancien regime have managed to retain their heads.
Despite the many hundreds of people who have died for the sake of genuine change, two of the frontrunners in this week’s race – former Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, and ex-air force chief Ahmed Shafik – are former figures who served under the toppled tyrant.
Many of the activists who spearheaded Egypt’s uprising want a bit more of revolutionary France’s guillotine efficiency – if only in its most metaphorical sense.
A select few among the presidential candidates – among them activist lawyer Khalid Ali and left wing firebrand Hamdeen Sabahi – have been willing to excoriate the military and make calls for investigations into army crimes committed over the past year.
But other candidates, such as Moussa and Shafik, have been decidedly less vocal. Local opinion polls, though often disputed, have given these candidates some of the best odds of winning – an indication, perhaps, that many Egyptians are not quite as hostile to the military establishment as many anti-government activists.
It wasn’t until 1793 that France’s King Louis emerged onto the scaffold beneath the guillotine – a full four years after the revolution started.
In Egypt, the much-hated Interior Ministry remains unreformed; corrupt officials are still in their jobs. But most of the presidential candidates appear under no illusions about the scale of effort required to rejuvenate the country. The real question is, whether the military establishment will stomach it.
