On Saturday, Cairo's Criminal Court delivered a landmark verdict against former president Hosni Mubarak, his two sons and seven of his top officials.
But Egyptian activists and politicians told the UAE-based newspaper Al Khaleej that the ruling fell far short of the aspirations that drove the revolution.
Mubarak and his interior minister, Habib Al Adly, were sentenced to life in prison - which equals 25 years under Egyptian law - for their responsibility in the murder of protesters during the revolution that unseated Mubarak last year.
The presiding judge, Ahmed Refaat, said Mubarak was guilty because he had failed to prevent the killings, not because he ordered them. Mubarak's sons, Gamal and Alaa, were acquitted of corruption charges. The six remaining defendants were found innocent of killing protesters.
"The verdict against Mubarak and the figures of his regime was handed down in the name of the Egyptian people, yet was against the wishes of the Egyptian people," said Gamal Zahran, a political-science professor at Cairo University.
"There will be wide popular discontent over this verdict, because the acquittal of the [six] interior minister's aides has exposed the support of the justice system and the judges themselves for the old regime and shows how protective they are of it," he added.
"The people will not settle for anything less than capital punishment for all those accused of killing the protesters. If that doesn't happen, you can expect great anger and a second round of the revolution."
Margaret Azer, a member of the Egyptian parliament, said the life sentence is more humiliating to Mubarak than a death sentence would have been.
"He will spend his last days in prison, and his fall from the top to a miserable life in jail will be a lesson for everybody."
Ali Abdulaziz, head of the so-called "revolution's shadow government", said the verdict was "political, not judicial".
"Plus, it's just a temporary ruling; it will soon be gone with the wind when it goes into appeal. At the end of the day, Mubarak and Al Adly will be exonerated. Both were convicted for their complicity in the killing of protesters, and since the real perpetrators - who are none other than Al Adly's aides - were found innocent, the accomplices will naturally have to be exonerated at some point," he said.
"This end result is just being delayed until the presidential election is over to absorb the public backlash."
And the spokesman of the April 6 Youth Movement, Mahmoud Afifi, said: "We will go back to Tahrir Square … The justice system must be cleansed. For how can you convict the abettors and exonerate the perpetrators? We're going back to our public squares to consummate the revolution."
Annan should admit that his plan has failed
If Kofi Annan is frustrated over his Syria peace plan, and aware that the country's future hangs in the balance, then why has he not announced his mission to be a failure up to now?, wondered Tariq Al Homayed in the London-based daily Asharq Al Awsat.
The UN-Arab League envoy to Syria expressed his frustration over the situation there, and went on to say that if his plan "is not the appropriate solution, there must be another solution, and this is the work of the Security Council".
"This indicates that Mr Annan does not intend to declare himself that his plan has failed," the writer noted.
"He wants the Security Council to do that, although he is aware of its outright paralysis on Syria, due to Russia's and China's stances."
It seems that Mr Annan is taking advantage of the stand of these two countries that support "Bashar Al-Assad's crimes to avoid announcing that his plan is a failure".
Now, the international community "must not only convince Russia and China that Mr Al Assad is a killer unworthy of support, and that their standing by him comes at huge cost to them", the writer said, but "alas, the international community must also convince Mr Annan to announce the failure of his mission in Syria".
"The least Mr Annan can do is to avoid giving breathing space to Mr Al Assad, day after day, as lives are lost on a daily basis in Syria."
Brotherhood victory would dismay the Gulf
Which Egyptian presidential candidate best serves the interests of the Arab Gulf countries, asked Shamlan Yousef Al Essa in the Emirati newspaper Al Ittihad.
Do the Gulf countries favour a president from a secular or a religious background?
"For the Muslim Brotherhood candidate to win would definitely not be in the best interests of the Gulf countries, as conservative as they are," the writer noted.
A Brotherhood victory would lead Islamists to power in many Arab countries. This in turn would expedite the fall of the Syrian regime, that the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot in Syria has been fighting fiercely. Thus, political Islam would reach the borders of the Gulf countries.
Several states in the Gulf are hostile towards the Brotherhood. Nayef bin Abdulaziz, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, has explicitly called the organisation a threat to the Gulf security.
By and large, the Gulf countries would not be happy with the Brotherhood leading the largest Arab nation. However, if that happens, these countries "will seek to win Egypt over to their side, and prevent it from boosting ties with Iran, with which they are at loggerheads over several issues, including the occupied UAE islands, interference in Bahrain's affairs, and the sea border (Continental Shelf) dispute".
* Digest compiled by The Translation Desk