[Author’s note: This commentary was originally published on Friday at 8:50 pm. The crisis in Egypt remains acute: Mubarak is ignoring persistent and defiant calls to step down, over 100 protesters have been killed yet tens of thousands continue to ignore increasingly rigid curfews, burning and looting are now widespread, and the initially accommodating military is beginning to show signs of Tiananmen-Square envy.]
Revolutionary forces used the occasion of Friday prayers today to organize calls for Hosni Mubarak, the 82-year-old president who has ruled Egypt by emergency decree for almost 30 years, to resign.
Emulating their Tunisian counterparts, protesters duly fanned out from mosques all over the country shouting “Mubarak must go!” More daringly, they defied police and security forces by hurling rocks and setting buildings and cars on fire with relative impunity.
Nevertheless, the most shocking thing about these protests since they began four days ago has been Mubarak’s conspicuous silence. That changed tonight when he finally delivered an address that was, alas, as bizarre as it was delusional.
Bizarre because he delivered it after midnight local time, when most Egyptians were probably fast asleep. Though, more to the point, he issued a defiant declaration about being the only one who can ensure law and order, and warned that he would not allow anyone to threaten the stability of the state.
He reminded his people that only he stands between them and an Islamist regime (namely the Muslim Brotherhood) that would make the Taliban seem positively Jeffersonian. This has been his bogeyman story throughout his rule and he’s sticking to it….
He then addressed the issue that concerned those of us watching in foreign countries almost as much as it concerned anxious Egyptians; namely, whether or not he would go. He said he would not.
Instead, in a delusional attempt to appease the protesters, he deployed the same strategy Tunisian President Ben Ali deployed before he was ousted. Specifically, Mubarak offered his entire cabinet as sacrificial lambs, announcing that he had fired the lot of them and would appoint a new government – by the very authoritarian fiat protesters are raging against.
But he then undermined this putative concession by promising many of the same political, social and economic reforms that he has been promising, and willfully breaking, for decades.
The protesters will not be impressed, and Mubarak knows this all too well. No doubt this is why he has mobilized the army to reinforce police efforts to restore law and order….
Significantly, President Obama followed Mubarak by delivering an address of his own. He began by informing the American people, indeed the world, that he had just had a frank discussion with the besieged Mubarak.
He then proceeded to layout what he told the Egyptian president are the necessary conditions he must meet to retain the support of the American government as well as the Egyptian people, including refraining from using violence to squash the protests, restoring civilian access to the Internet, and following through on promises to hold free and fair elections.
Of course, Obama and other Western leaders cannot afford to be too politically sanctimonious here. After all, they need a friendly government in Egypt not just to help in the war on terror, but also to limit hostile incursions across Israel’s Southwestern front and keep shipping lanes in the Suez Canal open. Their ambivalence therefore is understandable.
In any event, I suspect these revolutionaries will be no more appeased by Obama’s words about the universal imperatives of democratic freedoms and human rights than they were by Mubarak’s. After all, not only Obama, but all U.S. presidents have been saying much the same for decades too.
This does not bode well. All depends now on whether the army executes orders to crackdown or defies them – thereby forcing Mubarak to flee like Ben Ali.
Whose next: Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah of Jordan, Saleh of Yemen … Khadafi of Libya? The prospects make me positively giddy. When Obama spoke of HOPE and CHANGE during his presidential campaign these are not the transformations I anticipated; but I’ll take them.
Allah-u-akbar!
NOTE: A month ago, no one in his right mind would have predicted these protests, let alone a revolution in Tunisia. Therefore, is anyone willing to join me in predicting whether this revolutionary fire will catch on in Cuba too? I think not…
Related commentaries:
Tunisian revolution – catching fire elsewhere…?
* This commentary was originally published last night, Friday, at 8:50.
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