Protests in Egypt challenge Mubarak
A report from Cairo on the anti-government protests in Egypt which are challenging the Mubarak regime.
There was a vehemence to today’s street protests in downtown Cairo which does not augur well for Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year old regime. Those with longer memories than mine say that you have to go back to the bread riots of the late 197Os to witness such a direct assault on Egyptian authority.
Several factors have come together – chiefly unemployment, high food prices and the Tunisian revolt – to give these protests a fillip and Egypt’s President a jolt.
Today saw the first real test of the “domino theory” – the theory that what started in Tunisia could spread here. And my conclusions so far are mixed.
First, Tunisia is different. A far smaller, European-oriented country with a broader and better educated middle class in the vanguard of protest.
And crucially, the revolution happened there because the army sided with the Tunisian people, refusing to open fire on protestors as the police had. In Egypt, the army is still loyal to the President. And Egyptian police have not, as I write this, used live fire.
So those are the differences. Now for the similarities; state repression, unemployment, corruption favouring the elite. 90,000 people signed up on Facebook that they would join an Egyptian revolt, with social media playing a similar galvanising role in Tunisia.
Egypt has seen immolations inspired by that of Mohammed Bouazizi, the poor vegetable seller who set himself alight in Tunisia. And perhaps most importantly, a crisis seems to be emerging over who will succeeed Hosni Mubarak when he goes, reminding us of the stifling family nepotism of the Ben Ali regime.
“Gamal, tell your father that we hate you” was perhaps the most significant chant we repeatedly heard today.
Egyptians are no longer refraining from criticising the President directly. They have torn down his pictures, and made it clear that any plan to pass the Presidency to his son, Gamal, will be resisted.
I don’t think today’s protests necessarily spell the beginning of the end of the Mubarak regime. But the dynamics have changed and no one quite knows where all this is heading. A spirit of resistance has burst onto the streets. And its inspiration lies in Tunisia.