20 November, 2010
Cairo Egypt
It’s violent out there. Much worse than when the people were fighting Mubarak. But then everyone was expecting a bloody bash sooner or later.
The people were so proud of their peaceful removal of Mubarak. They were proud of having an army they felt they could trust.
They gave the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) the benefit of the doubt. They waited.
And they got Maspero.
When the military turned on peaceful Coptic protestor, the people lost faith.
SCAF’s done nothing but block movement. The old emergency laws are still in place. Government indignities still punctuate daily life. Most of the old regime guys are still in positions of power; only a few of the most publicly reviled have been prosecuted.
How insulting can you be?
I’m inspired by these protestors. They don’t want dictatorship, military or otherwise; They don’t want a Islamist state and they’re standing up for themselves.
Dark maneuvers
One theory is that Islamists set this protest up.
Maybe the scary, radical islamists cut a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood. After all, the Brotherhood, while moderate in recent years, has a well-known practice of political opportunism. Together they could agree to incite the protest, thus scaring moderate people away from the polls on November 28 and leaving the islamists to win a majority in parliament.
In another theory, the military allowed the first day of the revolt to go on without their intervention so they could claim the people weren’t ready to rule.
In either case, the strategies failed.
The square is now filled with people of every persuasion. They want Field Marshall Tantawi to resign and immediate transfer of power to the people as well as other things that are unrealistic.
That’s what people want.
Amal Sedky Winter, PhD
Cairo, Egypt
www.myeyeonegypt.net
November 20, 2010
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