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Comment on what happened

Egypt analysis by Tarek Heggy

Professor Valentina Colombo translated a thought by Egyptian writer Tarek Heggy who now finds himself in Egypt with his family.

The writer analyzes the situation in Egypt and Tunisia pointing out several common denominators and then tries to conjure up the scenario that will define itself at the end of the demonstrations:

"What will happen next? What should we expect in the days and weeks to come? I think the government is going to fail to contain and suppress the uprising that began on the morning of January 25, 2011. It will be worth nothing that the "attempt to minimize the size and significance of what is happening," is an attempt made by the government and its followers (including the "big",government appointed journalists, who are swapped in and out as needed). I think that the snowball will continue to roll and grow in size and mass enough to force the government and its followers to face reality.
The most likely scenario is that the President will make certain concessions to the “rioters”, such as appointing a new government and declare not to run for a sixth term of office (since it was enough to rule Egypt for 30 years!) as well as announce that his son will not be his successor (whose candidacy for the office of President is criticized by most of the demonstrators, an idea that the majority of Egyptians, with the sole exception of people linked to the current regime, consider offensive to the dignity of Egypt and the Egyptians). He will offer a handful of promises of political and economic reforms. And it is most likely this will happen after the revolt worsens and after he will have realised the impossibility of controlling it unless he uses a very large dose of violence, with the consequential loss of many lives, and his ruling out of the scenario for national and international reasons. But there is also the chance that the regime chooses not to take sides in the middle of the storm, but this remains a less likely scenario. However, it is a very
dangerous scenario that would lead to disastrous consequences. In my opinion, there is no doubt the scenario "could" lead to involvement in the crisis of "armed forces" which could bring over a few months or few years the substitution of the president (Mubarak will turn 83 years next May 4) at the hands of the army.

This would hurt Egypt politically, economically and culturally, and it will do much damage to its strategic value. There is still a crucial question: are not Egyptians known, as the Muslim commander who led the conquest of Egypt, of Amr ibn al-As said, as "a people who instinctively rebels only when there is no bread"? History (that of Ibn Iyas for example) tells us that in times of famine the Egyptians were eating dogs and cats, but they did not turn their anger directly against the king or Pharaoh! My answer is that the current president has ascended to power in 1981. Egyptians who rebel today are completely different from the Egyptians who have seen Hosni Mubarak in power after the assassination of Sadat on October 6th, 1981. Egyptians of the Eighties are the "sons and daughters" of the Egyptian state, they are spineless citizens, they are employees working for the state, ruled by the Pharaoh. Egyptians who rebel today are children of globalization, the Internet and Facebook. Most of them are not employed by the State, and
thanks to modern technology, are well informed about the outside world, and are perfectly familiar with the terrible difference between governing governments and servile governments. These people feed the snowball that will gather mass and force a change while at the same time bring the insurgency to a "critical threshold" so that things will no longer be like before...".

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Valentina Colombo is Senior Fellow at the European Foundation for
Democracy, teaches Geopolitics of the Islamic World at the European
University, Rome. She translated and edited Le prigioni della mente araba, (The Prisons of the Arab Mind), a collection of essays by Tarek Heggy.

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