In 1952 the Egyptian military decided they had had enough of the monarchy and they quickly concluded they had had enough of party politics too. Mohammed Naguib became first president in 1953 after the monarchy was formally abolished and a republic declared, and the next year he was deposed by Nasser over his desire for the military to return to the barracks and return the country to civilian rule.

In 1977, Sadat realized the military republic could survive perfectly well in the presence of political parties. A semblance of popular political process would lend even more legitimacy to the new political vehicle of government – the National Democratic Party that emerged from Nasser’s one-party state Arab Socialist Union – while allowing a means for the country to lose steam over his plans for peace with Israel and placing Egypt firmly within the sphere of American hegemony. Three were created, headed by old chums, to represent the left, right and centre, in a form of decor that came to be challenged by the Brotherhood in its various alliances with the Labour party – on the three, initially socialist, but turned Islamist – and the old pre-revolutionary Wafd party. This gimmick, which cost the state nothing in terms of its ability to coerce and control, set Egypt apart from almost all of its neighbours. In its shadow, the security services multiplied, transforming Egypt into a police state par excellence – all with the blessing of Western powers.

Now, it was always a mystery to political observers in Egypt during the Mubarak years, particularly after the Islamist insurgency of the 1990s and the subsequent crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, why the regime did not play a smarter game with the opposition. The authorities tended to divide them into ‘responsible’ and ‘irresponsible’, as a foreign ministry official once explained, with the former including the Wafd and leftist Tagammu and the latter including the Islamists and Nasserists, yet the regime never offered its preferidos more than crumbs. It would have cost Mubarak and NDP little in the way of legitimacy or prestige to include a few Wafd or Tagammu ministers in the cabinet, or even an Islamist or two for that matter. Instead, through a mixture of stubbornness, fear and stupidity, Egypt hurtled towards the denouement of 2011. The shoddy state of party politics was not the only factor that got the country to that point, of course, but it was for sure a major one.

So to today, another Rubicon is crossed. Post-January 25 uprising, we find the military state realizing, finally, that there is perhaps little to be lost in allowing the parties to form governments themselves or even a president who is not one of their own. The first one presented problems, but that’s been dealt with. The red lines are clear: the military’s budgets and economic interests must not be touched or subject to public scrutiny or limit, intelligence and other state security agencies retain a free hand to work with the military on border and security issues such as Sinai and Gaza, and foreign policy moves within strict pro-Western boundaries. Apart from that, why not allow the parties to run social affairs, education, transport, housing and the like? (Though note – not foreign affairs or the interior in the post-July 3 cabinet) Under the rubric of ‘concensus’ that has become the grand slogan of Egypt’s democratic experiment, there is little for the lords of the Big Brother state to fear – if only the irresponsible opposition will agree to their assigned role in the new order of things.