A new corps of protestors are armed with stones and Molotov cocktails, and they feel the next stage of Egypt’s revolution is now theirs.
The sun is up after a cold night, Cairo is bathed in its usual smog and protesters wrapped in blankets are sleeping off their latest remarkable triumph in Tahrir Square.
Not a second revolution exactly, but they’ve won remarkable concessions from the man in charge of Egypt which seemed unthinkable just a few days ago.
Egypt’s latest power struggle began when the army suggested a new and yet to be drafted constitution would put both the military and its budget beyond civilian rule. Tens of thousands poured into the streets last Friday, and in the last few days scores of people have been killed and thousands injured in heavy-handed attempts to persuade them to go home.
It didn’t work. Egypt’s rulers had failed to observe the basic lesson of the Arab Spring, which Egypt itself taught us back in January and February – that violence begets more violence and anger.
So now Field Marshal Tantawi has given in by proposing a road map for Egypt’s future, which will see a “salvation government” headed by a new prime minister, presidential elections by next June and the military leaving power.
The question is whether having achieved so much so quickly, Tahrir Square’s residents will go home satisfied or hold out for more.
I suspect that a silent majority of Egyptians now want this standoff over. After all, the army was instrumental in forcing President Hosni Mubarak out in February. It is a conscript force and still much respected.
Egypt’s biggest political bloc, the Muslim Brotherhood, has officially been sitting out these protests. It doesn’t want any delay to parliamentary elections, due to start on Monday, elections which the Brotherhood are poised to win.
There are also fewer businessmen and Cairo intellectuals than I remember from January’s protests; so all in all, I am not sure the cross-section of Egyptian society is as broad as it was then.
But I also think a new corps of protesters has been radicalised during the last few days. Many of them are just 16 or 17 years old. They are armed with stones and Molotov cocktails, and they feel the next stage of Egypt’s revolution is now theirs.
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