“Mahmoud Bey”, parliamentarian and businessman, is talking to a group that includes senior officers in the security apparatus, at what appears to be a party just before the January 1977 bread riots. To the sound of background music more befitting a cabaret, Bey speaks about the need to privatize Alexandria's beaches and all public sector factories.

When the official results of Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy’s victory in the presidential election were announced, some activists were quick to celebrate the fall of the “July state,” in reference to the military regime installed by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers following the 23 July 1952 coup.

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the 23 July 1952 revolution led by the Free Officers Movement, which secured Egypt’s independence from British colonial rule, ended the monarchy of King Farouk and installed the first native regime to rule the country for two thousand years. Today, President Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s family commemorates the first anniversary of the revolution to take place after the death of his eldest son Khaled Gamal Abdel-Nasser in September 2011.

Immediately after the 25 January revolution, national and independent papers have witnessed a werewolf-like transformation, with headlines reading, “Egypt on the verge of famine,” “The collapse of the stock market” and “40 days until wheat reserves run out.”

My brother, member of the Freedom and Justice Party, Al-Nour, Al-Assala, Construction and Development parties, or any other party based on religion, imagine if circumstance forced you to live in a European country or the US, which is not a far-fetched assumption since President Mohamed Morsi lived many years in the US while studying for his doctorate. Imagine you are living in the US and want to hold Friday prayers but you can’t because all the mosques have been shut down.

There are those who claim that the Islamization of Egyptian society reflects "the will of the people." But history teaches us that the "will of the people" is not always beneficial.

The American magazine Business Week, published by Bloomberg, describes Hassan Malek, a 53-year-old Muslim Brotherhood millionaire businessman as follows: “Mild-mannered and serious in conservative suits, Malek would easily blend in with the Wall Street crowd.”

The inauguration of the country’s first elected president on 30 June was meant to mark the final step in the country’s so-called “transition,” with a long-heralded handover of power from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to a civilian government, complete with an elected parliament and a new constitution.

In the early days of World War II, French Premier Paul Reynaud remarked to General Philippe Pétain: “You take Hitler for another Wilhelm I, the old man who seized Alsace-Lorraine from us and that was all. But Hitler is Genghis Khan.” Reynaud’s subtext was clear: if you wish to use the ‘history repeating itself’ line, use the right history.

The concept of revolutionary legitimacy became predominant in the early days of Arab revolutions, reflecting a unified popular will to bring down existing regimes, and their constitutions.

Since Morsy assumed his responsibilities as president, public opinion has gathered across three camps. A supporting camp, another pushing him to fulfill his revolutionary promises and hoping he would fail, and a third confused camp that may have secretly regretted taking to the streets on 25 January 2011, after seeing that Egypt’s political fate ended in a catch-22 between Mubarak’s regime and an Islamist party.

It is a mistake to think that democracy is the solution for all our problems. When Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst political systems but there is no better system, he meant that what democracy gives us is nothing more than a peaceful way to resolve problems but the solutions themselves depend on people’s innovation, consensus and agreement. More so, achieving democracy itself is a path of pain and more wounds.

Teetering on the brink of debt default, the eurozone economies have once again moved center-stage in the ongoing global economic turmoil.

A week has passed since the official inauguration of Mohamed Morsi as Egypt’s first freely-elected president. The new president has been engaged ever since in continuous trials to form a Cabinet of technocrats headed by an independent premier who belongs to no particular political camp or party. The immediate goal of such a proposition is to share the burden of running the country in such tumultuous times with other political and social forces.

Egypt is currently reeling from the outcome of the presidential race, exhausted, confused and with blurred vision. This is accompanied by deep frustration among half of the population who opted for Ahmed Shafiq, or reluctantly voted for Mohamed Morsi, or voided their ballot or boycotted the entire process altogether. It is a scene that forces the powers that lost the elections — or didn’t lose because they didn’t even run — to stop and think and review the situation to catch up on what they have missed and move forward.

For the past 18 months, Egyptians have been struggling to follow up with the constantly shifting developments in the political sphere. Developments seem to not only play with the existing balance of power, but rather with our own perceptions of what constitutes reality. It almost feels like we are under constant pressure to recollect, organize and reflect on the memories of the events of our enduring revolution, before they fade away, or even worse — are replaced.

Since Mohamed Morsi was declared the first post-Mubarak president of Egypt, there has been widespread speculation of confrontation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military. Many read the outcome of the presidential election results as one that went against the will of the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces).

The last few months have been a sobering experience for Egyptian revolutionaries. As was the case in Europe after the “Springtime of the Peoples” in 1848 — when uprisings overturned governments in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan and many smaller capitals — moderate and progressive forces quickly lost ground, unprepared for their success, lacking organization and bickering among themselves. In Egypt in 2012, as in Europe in 1849, reactionary forces seem in the ascendant. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and its judicial toadies have found the Mubaraks innocent of corruption, dismissed the elected Parliament and imposed its own governing “law,” soon to be revised by a kangaroo constitution-writing body.

Dear reader, How many times did you say or hear others say that Egyptians are not fit for democracy? How often did you lend an ear to those who claim Egyptians need to be taught how to exercise their political rights, or say so yourself?

Why did the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) rule Egypt during the transitional period in such tragic fashion, leading to such a bitter harvest?

Over the last weeks, the presidential election has dominated Egypt’s political conversation, eclipsing a topic of far greater importance: the drafting of a new constitution. Since this foundational legal document will govern the lives of citizens, determining their rights and responsibilities and shaping the government’s ability to advance society’s interests, Egyptians ought to consider their options carefully. This overview attempts to help the process. It describes two basic types of democracy — parliamentary and presidential — and explains what each can offer to Egypt.