Revolt Leaders Cite Failure to Uproot Old Order in Egypt (NY Times)

[pinto]

Revolt Leaders Cite Failure to Uproot Old Order in Egypt

CAIRO — They toppled a pharaoh, but now the small circle of liberals, leftists and Islamists who orchestrated Egypt’s revolution say they realize they failed to uproot the networks of power that Hosni Mubarak nurtured for nearly three decades.

They were naïve, they say, strung along by the generals who seized power in their name.

“The system was like a machine with a plastic cover, and what we did was knock off the cover,” said Islam Lotfy, back then a rising star in the Muslim Brotherhood who had predicted that if they ousted the head of state its body would fall. The roots of the ruling elite were “much deeper and darker” than they initially understood, he said.

Even before Egypt’s highest court dissolved Parliament on Thursday, and its military rulers reimposed martial law, the once close-knit team of young professionals who guided last year’s uprising had been pushed to the sidelines of a presidential runoff between two conservatives: Ahmed Shafik, Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, and Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that was Mr. Mubarak’s main opposition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/world/middleeast/egyptian-revolts-leaders-count-their-mistakes.html