Mubarak

I remember once remarking to a Cairanese taxi driver that there seemed to be a lot of police about. He said yes, but there are even more that you can’t see. Hosni Mubarak, who came to power after the assassination of Sadat, has kept a tight grip on things these 30 years. I wonder what he is thinking now.

Cairo has a population of around 8m, but the same number again come into the centre each day, working or looking for work, making the city a hotbed of talk, rumour and now violence. Nevertheless, the number involved in the demonstrations is in the tens of thousands, a tiny percentage of the population, and the number killed is a lower percentage than when the police opened fire at Kent State University forty years ago (Hillary Clinton please note, before mouthing off again about police violence). Mubarak, who was Vice President to Sadat for 6 years and before that Commander of the Airforce, is not a man of the people and will be wondering if all this will soon blow over. In this, I think, he is wrong.

As I write, we learn that Mubarak has dismissed his cabinet. He will feel that he has been let down by others; dictators always feel that. Has it spread from Tunisia? We read in the Daily Telegraph this morning that all this has been encouraged by the USA. To be double crossed after turning a blind eye to all that rendition business! And after his help in the Gulf War!

But eventually Mubarak will see that it wasn’t the cabinet the people were complaining about; that the crowd of demonstrators was growing and they were not Americans, but Egyptians; that they are burning pictures of him, and demanding that his son Gamal doesn’t take over after him.

In short, they are demanding change, and some time, maybe even this week, Mubarak will see this and go. What he will leave we can only guess. It is not for us to interfere, but we must watch it carefully, and hope.