generalspeaking

Inchoate Rage

Without for one moment dismissing the very real reasons for people to be fed up with their state of existence whose state owns entirely to the geographic, social and political conditions in which they live, there are times when mass hysteria spreads like a malignant virus, causing people to mass in dense howling crowds to demand change, without fully comprehending the potential outcome of what it is they demand.

The current president of Egypt has been exercising his role as sole and supreme leader for three decades. In that time the population has almost doubled, and so has the average, albeit inadequate income level, still leaving fully 40% of the population living in dire poverty. The government is undeniably politically repressive; there are no acknowledged legitimate political challengers; human rights are not recognized and protected.

At the same time, it should be recognized that nowhere in the Middle East has anything approximating democracy been established. All of the Arab countries and the sole non-Arab Muslim country in the geography are governed by autocratic rulers, sheiks, monarchs, theocracies, and now, in Lebanon, an Islamist, terror group matching its sponsor in Iran.

It is the young people of Egypt, mostly between 20 and 30, the educated, those who know how differently the country could be governed, through their contacts with the outside world by means of technological devices, by visiting other countries, by completing their educations elsewhere, who are restive and demanding change from the repression they have long lived with.

The wealthy and the older middle class are not out in the streets demonstrating. Nor are the poor. The young unemployed are, but there is no central organization and the prevailing atmosphere is anarchic in response to what they feel is their time to erupt in anger over their condition. The police, always despised for their brutal presence and response, have been deployed to deal with the protests.

They have been dispatched to vulnerable places in protection of government buildings, tourist spots and to the areas deemed most likely to be vulnerable to the crowds of protesters. Among the protesters are those who just enjoy a rousing opportunity to vent their frustration over life, and those whose aspirations are no more complicated than pillaging and looting where police are absent.

Shops, businesses, private homes left unattended, or left in the care of the helpless and the unarmed are now vulnerable to being entered and robbed, because the police whose presence is normally a deterrent are displaced otherwise. And because they have had to abandon their normal activities there have been jail riots and break-outs. Violent criminals have accessed their freedom and now roam freely.

Members of arrested Islamist groups imprisoned for security reasons, are now enjoying their freedom, some of them having crossed through the Egyptian border into Gaza. Armed terrorists are reported to have torched a police station at the Rafiah border. And Bedouin tribes hostile to the Egyptian government have used rocket-propelled grenades and rifles to attempt a takeover of the border area in the absence of Egyptian police and army forces, called to duty elsewhere, to help quell rioting protesters.

The Muslim Brotherhood had announced they had given assent to their youth members to join the protesters, but they are themselves not actively involved, it seems. Even though should the government of President Mubarak fall, they might seem to be the logical inheritors given their cohesion and long-standing organization. Former IAEA head Mohamed al-Baradei seems to have given them a clean bill of health, denying them to be fanatics.

He has no established organization himself, and lacks credibility as a potential replacement for Mr. Mubarak, but he could represent as a possible figurehead for the Muslim Brotherhood, thus fulfilling both his and their agenda to take over the reigns of government; an unsavoury and potentially worrying scenario.

But in light of the fact that President Mubarak elevated his top intelligence chief and staunch ally, highly respected in international circles as well as with the Egyptian public, as an esteemed public figure who has the support of the country's still-respected armed forces, it is entirely possible that
the newly-appointed Omar Suleiman may leap from vice-president to President with current President Mubarak stepping down for the good of the country.

The reforms that President Mubarak promised could be implemented under a new president. Which would encourage the return to Egypt of its wealthy citizens and the middle-class and professionals who have hastily departed in fear of the revolutionary zeal of the demonstrators who refuse to adhere to the government's appeals for withdrawal from the streets.

On the other hand, President Mubarak, despite his age, is determined for now not to step down from office. Should he remain, and begin to speedily put in force the changes he has suggested to turn Egypt into a more democratic country that offers its people the dignity of their human rights, the country would still have to contend with the problems of rising food prices, unemployment, and the incessant, destabilizing threats of fundamentalism.

Labels: Middle East, Political Realities, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, January 30, 2011