Today Egypt lives a great moment. Today we start a new life. Today we are about to build a better future. For those who didn’t know, the Egyptians started a revolution on Jan the 25th. We went out against our dictator and his corrupt regime. The Egyptian people said “We want the entire regime out”. A lot of things happened since then. The government started by using the police force to suppress the revolution. They shoot the protesters using tear gas bombs , rubber bullets and gun shots. Some died and some were injured but amazingly no one stopped and no one left the streets. Every day the number of people protesting in the streets increased. Suddenly the police force withdrew completely from the streets, they opened prisons and let the prisoners out. They even sent thugs out to rob and terrorize people in their homes to force them to stay at home to defend themselves instead of protesting. Later on thugs even attacked the protesters and threw molotov bombs on them. A lot of the protesters died in the attack and the government thought they succeeded in making the revolution fail. But amazingly people became more insistent to get their freedom and the number of people kept increasing every day until they became all over Egypt and not only in the capital. The protesters insisted that the president has to step down after all what he has done and they kept living day and night in a very famous square in Cairo called El Tahrir Square. They slept there and said they will never leave until he leaves. And we kept like that days and days and the president and his government kept trying to suppress the move. Until today we achieved our goal, he was forced to step down.
This is a true example of Leadership. The revolution started by a group of young people who gathered each other through facebook and twitter. They even called it the facebook revolution. And day after day it became the Peoples revolution. This is a revolution without one leader, all the millions of people contributing and protesting were leaders. They showed insistence and persistence and patience, they showed extreme organization and determination. They knew exactly what they wanted and worked hard to get it and they did. It was amazing how young men went down the streets and kept awake all night to protect their homes and their neighbors’ homes against the thugs they sent on us. It was amazing how people went out to collect garbage from the streets to keep our country clean because we had a curfew so the garbage collectors didn’t come.
Anyone who wants to learn how to become a true leader has to look at the Egyptian people experience. We made history today and we showed the world that the Egyptian people are all leaders and they can achieve.
All my respect to us Egyptians and all my respect to the people who stayed in Tahrir Square until they forced the Tyrant out and all my respect to the martyrs who paid their lives a price for Egypt to get its freedom.
Doha Shawki 