Approximately one million people (according to Aljazeera) attended this day of the martyrs, during which both Christian and Islamic services were held to commemorate the victims of the uprising.
The atmosphere however, remained festive and a wedding was actually celebrated on the square Sunday afternoon.
Yet, there were signs that the army was attempting to remove some of the makeshift barriers erected by the occupants as protection from hostile outside forces, and moving inside the square. As a result, some youths resorted to sitting down in front of the tanks to immobilize them…
As banks and shops began reopening, Vice President Omar Suleiman invited opposition forces to discuss constitutional reform.
Washington and other Western capitals support this process, and the man leading it, the Vice President.
That (an orderly transition) takes some time. There are certain things that have to be done in order to prepare, Hillary Clinton said, in a speech given at a conference on security in Munich.
At the same event, Chancellor Angela Merkel made a similar statement.
There will be change in Egypt, but clearly, the change has to be shaped in a way that is peaceful, a sensible way forward, she declared.
The West clearly fears that the current revolutionary process could subvert the current order, creating a vacuum that would then be filled by forces (anti-Western Islamic forces) imposing an agenda hostile to its security interests.
The Palestinian precedent must also be haunting them: free and fair parliamentary elections were conducted in 2006 with Western support. Our friends, The Fatah of President Abbas, were trounced by Hamas, an Islamic movement opposed to the peace process with Israel.
Washington and the EU are keen on making sure such an outcome is not replicated in Egypt…The establishment of a democratic regime would be the desired outcome, as long as its leaders are pro-Western and Israeli…Elections must not be organized to soon, for only one party is currently sufficiently organized and influential to win them, the Muslim Brotherhood. President Obama claimed on Sunday evening that elements of its program are anti-American, according to Fox.
Revolutions have overthrown dictators in the name of democracy only to see the process hijacked by new autocrats who use violence, deception and rigged elections to stay in power, Clinton added.
In light of such a risk, Washington prefers supporting the old autocrats, those it knows well and has been subsidizing for thirty years. If stalwarts of the old regime such as Suleiman supervise the transition leading to new elections in September, the greater the chance, it is hoped, that Egypt’s new leaders will pursue policies compatible with US and Israeli interests in the region.
To say that Mubarak should stay and lead the process of change, and that the process of change should essentially be led by his closest military advisor (Suleiman) who’s not the most popular person in Egypt, without the sharing of power with civilians, it would be very, very disappointing, Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters.
There remained some confusion however, concerning what role, if any, Mubarak should play in this process. We need to get a national consensus around the pre-conditions for the next step forward. The president must stay in office to steer those changes. I believe that President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical-it's his chance to write his own legacy, declared Frank Wisner, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Egypt, on Saturday. This did not reflect, apparently, the official position of the United States.
In light of what’s happened the last two weeks, going back to the old ways is not going to work. Suppression is not going to work. Engaging in violence is not going to work, President Obama had declared on Friday.
He did not demand however (nor did the Europeans) that Mubarak resign.
Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq confirmed on Saturday that the Egyptian president would not step down before the end of his term, which expires in September…
Vice President Suleiman, thus, met with members of the opposition, including the Muslim Brotherhood, a party banned over fifty years ago, but that is tolerated in the country.
Suleiman did make some concessions. He called for the formation of a committee to examine possible amendments to the constitution that would permit free and fair elections; the prosecution of corrupt officials; measures to promote the freedom of the press; the lifting of the emergency law when conditions allow and the release of political prisoners currently in detention.
The Muslim Brotherhood however, was not satisfied.
We cannot call it talks or negotiations. The Muslim Brotherhood went with a key condition that cannot be abandoned, that he (Mubarak) needs to step down in order to usher in a democratic process, Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a spokesman for the organization, told Aljazeera. If they were serious, the parliament would have been dissolved, also a presidential decree ending the emergency law, he added.
Mohamed ElBaradei, who was not invited to participate, also criticized the Vice President’s approach. The process is opaque. Nobody knows who is talking to whom at this stage. It’s managed by Vice President Suleiman. It is all managed by the military and that is part of the problem, he told NBC.
The process initiated on Sunday satisfies the leaders of the current autocratic regime, and those of the West.
Yet, who consulted the main protagonists, that is to say the Egyptian people, so diversely represented at Tahrir Square?
The movement’s particularity is its amorphous nature and fundamental democratic character.
I was expecting to find the Wafd were the leaders, or the Brotherhood were the leaders. There are no leaders at all, one demonstrator told the NYT.
It is led, or rather, inspired and motivated by Egypt’s youth.
Those young men defended Egypt. They took the bullet, a leader of ElBaradei’s National Association for Change, told the NYT.
It is inside the Square that the demonstrators elaborated their own political agenda.
When the government shut down the web, politics moved on to the streets, and that’s where it has stayed. It’s impossible to construct a perfect decision-making mechanism in such as fast-moving environment, but this is as democratic as we can possibly be, a young demonstrator told Jack Shenker, of The Guardian.
Protesters debate the future of the nation.
Their delegates meet to refine this agenda and the proposals that are greeted with the loudest cheer and applause when communicated to the crowd by the PA system are adopted.
The regime is trying to demonize protesters as agents of foreign powers, fomenters of chaos and so on. But go down to Tahrir, sit on a corner, and within five minutes you’ll be in the middle of a spontaneous political discussion-the energy of people’s ideas is inspiring. It’s down there that the legitimate voice of the protesters and our revolution can be heard, Hossam el-Hamalawy, a journalist, told Shenker.
The revolution is now in the custody of the streets, and that is where its future lies, not in the White House, nor the Presidential Palace in Heliopolis.
What we have here is the opposite of a vacuum; we have democracy in action on the ground in Tahrir Square. We are full of hope and ideas, and our gallant young people are guarding our periphery, the author Ahdaf Soueif wrote in The Guardian.
The words of people are stronger than guns, one protester named Mohammed mused.
In the words of Anthony Shadid, Tahrir has become an idea as much as a place…
Those in the Square and elsewhere have been victimized, brutalized, robbed, disenfranchised and at best, ignored for over thirty years. The notion that Mubarak and his henchmen can be entrusted with the transition process the aim of which is to establish an authentic and functioning democracy is absurd.
Either the people or the regime will prevail; there can be no accommodation.
It’s in the streets now. It’s the people of Egypt protesting. We have no future. Either we die, or this regime goes completely, Omar Ghoneim, a businessman, told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
I am doing this for my son. Mubarak has to go because with Mubarak my son has no future…The government is Mubarak’s government, not our government. I will stay here until Mubarak leaves. I will stay here days, months, years, an accountant called Ismael told Chris McGreal of The Guardian.
But we cannot be afraid to free ourselves. I’m 30 years old and I’ve never voted in an election because they were always corrupt and fake. We are going to stay until he goes, Ahmed Moar, a university professor, told The Guardian.
The authenticity and power of the messages being hurled from Tahrir Square should not be ignored in Washington D.C.
Many Egyptians fear that the US, even Obama’s US, will do whatever it takes, even sacrificing their interests, to preserve the current regime, even in a diluted form, in order to protect Israel.
Egypt is not against America. I don’t want the Americans to tell my country what to do. All Egyptian people must decide. America has an agenda. It is not our agenda and this is our revolution, Ismael added.
What are the objectives of the revolution?
The former opposition presidential candidate, Ayman Nour tried to summarize the people’s fundamental demands:
*the eradication of the police state and its repressive apparatus;
*the formation of a national unity government tasked with drafting a new constitution;
*the organization of free and fair elections.
First and foremost however, Mubarak must leave, and leave now.
In essence, Ahdaf Soueif poses the fundamental question: can a people’s revolution that is determinedly democratic, grass-roots, inclusive and peaceable succeed?
It is the responsibility of all those who believe in freedom, justice and democracy to ensure that it does.
Crucially, this responsibility belongs to those who represent us, Mrs. Merkel, MM. Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy.
It is the revolution of the Egyptian people, which they have paid for with decades of abuse, and we have no right to strip it away from them, in order to preserve a sclerotic, corrupt regime which we foolishly believed could foster stability in the region.
Only a functioning democracy can achieve this, not brazen despotism.
So let us, at the very least, if we can manage no better, get out of their way, and allow them to finish what they have so valiantly started…
(the photograph of Christians and Muslims commemorating the fallen in Tahrir Square is by Amel Pain/EPA)
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