Revolution 2.0. Wael Ghonim

voting practice in Egypt was that voters were issued “electoral cards” in their respective districts. The card was required at the polling station for a voter to cast his or her vote. Since rigging was significant and consistent, most Egyptians were disinclined to obtain a card. In turn, that made rigging even easier. As a popular joke put it, we were so proud of our democracy that we even let deceased people cast votes. To demand that voting require only a national identity card was to demand free and fair elections.

      The great thing about these demands was that the majority of opposition forces agreed to and supported them. Even the regime found it difficult to argue publicly against most of the seven demands. Dr. ElBaradei’s idea to issue this statement as a petition was a great one. It was an excellent new tool of pressure, and it increased the possibilities that the regime might compromise.

      To collect signatures in significant numbers, the movement turned to the Internet. The petition was published online, and citizens just needed to enter their name, address, and national ID number to sign. The organizers also helped people overcome their fear by publishing the initial hundred signees, who were public figures willing to use their authentic personal information.

      Fear overcame me on the first and second days of the petition. But then I entered all my personal information and signed. I was citizen number 368 to do so. My fear turned into excitement when I realized I was beginning a new phase: I now publicly opposed the regime. I had no doubt that State Security downloaded the list of signees regularly, particularly since it contained everyone’s full name, yet I was excited to be part of the growing crowd.

      I was keen to meet Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, and I tried to schedule a meeting with him during my first trip back home. I sent an e-mail to the Egyptian actor Khaled Abol Naga, whom I had first met at a Google event that we organized for Orphans Day in April 2009. I had seen him endorse ElBaradei on YouTube. I explained that I wished to augment ElBaradei’s efforts with my Internet abilities. Abol Naga’s response came instantly, providing the e-mail address for Ali ElBaradei, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei’s brother.

      I e-mailed Ali ElBaradei, introducing myself and explaining that I managed the ElBaradei Facebook page. He did not know about the page, yet he welcomed any kind of cooperation and promised to set up an appointment with Dr. ElBaradei when I was next in Cairo.

      At the same time I e-mailed Mahmoud al-Hetta, who managed the “ElBaradei President of Egypt 2011” group. We spoke on Skype when I was in Dubai and discussed how we could cooperate. I was amazed at how brave this young man was, as were the other activists who used their real names on the Internet. Yet I advised him to hide his name, as Facebook enables you to do, for the sake of the campaign’s sustainability. There was no need to publish names where State Security might see them, I said. It was a brief call, and we agreed to meet up as soon as I was in Cairo.

      A couple of weeks later, on my way to meeting Mahmoud, I was paranoid. I remained afraid of State Security. When I arrived at the local café on a small side street where we had agreed to meet, I glanced left and right before I joined both Mahmoud and Abdel Rahman Youssef, the campaign manager for the movement on the ground. The poet sensed my apprehension and tried to reassure me. He argued that our work was for a just cause, and that accordingly we had nothing to hide or be afraid of. I was not convinced, and I argued back that secrecy could never harm us and might even prove beneficial to our battle for democracy at a later point in time. I also requested that both of them keep my identity concealed. We discussed the importance of breaking the psychological barrier of fear and how to campaign for the petition with the seven demands. Signees had barely reached 10,000 at the time, a number that fell significantly below our expectations. Although no clear action plan was born out of our meeting, I was nevertheless thrilled to see such zeal and enthusiasm for the cause.

      On April 11, I finally had a chance to meet with Dr. ElBaradei himself. His brother informed me by e-mail of the appointment, mentioning that others would also attend. I asked him if I could invite two other people to join us; he didn’t mind. AbdelRahman Mansour couldn’t make it, as he was out of the country, so I called two other friends who were equally devoted to helping to change Egypt: an engineer, Mostafa Abu Gamra, who owns a technology company that works in content development, and Dr. Hazem Abdel Azim, a senior government official working at the Ministry of Communications. I was quite excited to meet the man whom I had been independently campaigning for.

      ElBaradei lives in a villa in one of the private residential compounds on the Cairo–Alexandria Desert Road. I planned to take a taxi, to avoid any potential trouble of being recognized by State Security informants via my car’s license plates. Dr. Abdel Azim, however, decided to drive and offered me a ride. ElBaradei was a prominent Egyptian figure and there should be no problem visiting him, he assured me. We met Mostafa Abu Gamra on the way, and the three of us headed off. The guards at the compound’s gates let us in without any problem.

      The villa was beautifully furnished and decorated, yet it was not extravagant in any way. Some of Dr. ElBaradei’s critics claimed he lived a lavish suburban life disconnected from that of ordinary Egyptians. They had portrayed his home as a palace or fortress, with high fences, but this was not the case.

      ElBaradei received us in person. Everything he said lived up to my expectations. I was worried that this might change once I offered some criticism; people’s true faces appear under criticism, not under praise. He stood among a group of his guests, which included two young film directors, some senior businessmen, and other prominent figures.

      Everyone was involved in a heated debate. ElBaradei was an excellent listener, and it never felt like he was leading the discussion. On the contrary, he seemed to be seriously learning from the opinions of others — just the type of leader I felt Egyptians needed. Then I offered my criticism: I suggested that he needed to speak in a language closer to the hearts of mainstream Egyptians. The jargon of elitist intellectuals would not help our quest for popular support.

      I also mentioned ElBaradei’s recently initiated Twitter account. It was new at the time, but he already had 10,000 followers. It took very little time for him to become the most followed Egyptian on Twitter. I suggested that he sometimes seemed too rushed in his posts. Some of his tweets did not sit well with activists and newspaper readers (newspapers regularly published his tweets). His great quality, if you asked me, was that he refused to be considered a savior. He believed in the nation’s youth and in their ability to bring change. I recommended that he tweet about that more frequently. Young Egyptians needed to regain their self-confidence before they could take action.

      I also criticized his travels outside of Egypt during these difficult times. Many others viewed this as his worst error. Regardless of the fact that he actually had many scheduled commitments abroad, ElBaradei’s frequent travels hurt the perceived effectiveness of the campaign and gave his opponents a chance to taint him as a tool of the West, or a self-promoter who ignored his homeland.

      Everyone had something to say. The two directors, Amr Salama and Mohamed Diab, thought that the seven-demands petition was inviting trouble for ElBaradei. Making it a priority and making the signees’ information publicly available at a time when dissident Egyptians were not yet ready to go public was not right, they claimed. They had a point: a vast gulf separated the total number of potential supporters and the actual signees up to that day.

      On that question, however, I defended Dr. ElBaradei’s vision. I found the statement to be an excellent manifestation of the snowball effect. The daily increase in signatures, I believed, made people hopeful. It also prompted community discussions about the statement’s seven demands, adding pressure on the government to implement them.

      It was a fruitful meeting that left me both optimistic and energized. I took a picture with ElBaradei and made it the profile image on my Facebook page. The caption under it said, “I am Wael Ghonim. I declare my support of Dr. ElBaradei.” The meeting had helped me partially break my own barrier of fear.

      Next I created a Google e-mail group called “ElBaradei” to enable key supporters to communicate effectively. It was a closed group that could be joined only with permission from one of the moderators. I began adding people whom I knew and trusted to the group. Ali ElBaradei forwarded the e-mail addresses of his brother’s other supporters,