Egyptian protesters hope to follow Tunisia’s example

25 Jan 11 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa

A few memorable snapshots from today’s “Day of Rage” protests in Egypt:

• A group of about 100 protesters is marching along the Nile corniche chanting anti-government slogans. From the other direction comes a much larger group of demonstrators. The two sides embraced in the street amid raucous cheering and began marching together.

• About 1000 protesters march through the lower class district of Boulaq Aboul Ela. Many of the protesters appeal to sidewalk gawkers and local merchants to join them. I spot a matronly woman in her 40s holding a young girl and enthusiastically giving the marchers a thumbs up. Next to her, an elderly woman with about four teeth beams with pleasure and happily chants anti-government slogans as the demonstrators march past.

• With more than 1000 protesters jostling with riot police outside the Supreme Court downtown, I take a walk away from the war zone to look for side protests. On a deserted stretch of 26 July street, a young family — middle aged man and woman with a boy who looks about nine years old — walk arm-in-arm down the middle of the street chanting “down with Hosni Mubarak!”

Today was a day for witnessing scenes that most Egyptians never imagined would be possible. But with the echoes of the Tunisian uprising still rippling through the region, the Arab World’s most populous country is entering into uncharted waters. Inspired by the waves of civil unrest that drove Tunisian dictator Zine al Abideen Bin Ali from power earlier this month, Egyptians produced a public response unprecedented in at least 30 years.

Thousands of protesters took control of downtown Cairo’s central Tahrir square this afternoon as a series of nationwide demonstrations demanded an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign. A massive deployment of black-clad riot police used water cannons, tear gas and batons to repel the protesters, who pushed through police cordons and established dominance over the entire square, just one block away from the Egyptian Parliament.

As of late afternoon, the situation downtown was tense and uncertain, with the police alternatively advancing behind a hail of tear gas canisters, then giving ground once the crowd regrouped. The air in Tahrir square was thick with the acrid stench of tear gas as police struggled to cope with the sheer size of the demonstration. Only time will tell if today’s events will produce something long-lasting that builds into an actual threat to President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign. But at the very least, this was the first time in 13 years of covering protests in Egypt that the protesters potentially outnumbered the police.

At one point, more than a thousand people stood outside a building on along the Nile belonging to Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party and chanted “illegitimate” and “Oh Mubarak, your plane is waiting for you” — a reference to Bin Ali’s abrupt flight into exile 10 days ago. Independent estimates on crowd size were sketchy, but the protest I witnessed in Tahrir Square numbered at least 5,000 strong, with reports of similarly sized crowds of demonstrators marching toward the city center to join the main protest.

Today’s events — timed to coincide with the National Police Day holiday — started as a series of scattered protests in at least six different parts of Cairo. Organizers had originally announced they would gather outside the Interior Ministry near Tahrir Square. But that proved to be a bluff, as word went out via Twitter and Facebook about a series of alternate gathering points. Throughout the day Twitter proved to be a crucial platform for both organisation and real-time reports from the street. But the service abruptly stopped working for most people around 4:30 pm, prompting speculation that it had been blocked.

By nightfall, calls were going out on Twitter for anyone living in the downtown area to bring supplies in preparation for an all-night sit-in. There was also a call for local residents to remove the password protection from their wireless networks so that protesters could use them to get online.

Tunisia’s revolution hangs over Arab governments

18 Jan 11 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa

I’m in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Shiekh covering the 2nd Arab Economic Summit — a chance for Arab ministers and business magnates to gather and discuss the economic future of the region. But the elephant in the room this week is Tunisia, where a failure to create economic opportunities for the people has resulted in a shocking outbreak of civil unrest that drove a heavily entrenched Arab dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, into exile in just one month.

For Arab governments, Tunisia serves as a chilling example that economics IS politics. The protests that swept Bin Ali from power weren’t sparked by a desire for greater political freedom; that certainly became the main issue, but it all started when a humble 26-year-old street vendor publicly set himself on fire in mid-December to protest his inability to earn a living wage despite holding a university degree.

The delegates here aren’t going out of their way to mention Tunisia, but they can hardly help talking about it since every journalist they meet makes a point of asking. I managed to get two minutes with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, and immediately asked him what the lessons were from the Tunisian example. His response was surprisingly direct for a career Arab diplomat. “It’s an obvious lesson. The people will no longer accept to be marginalised and pressurised like this.”

Egyptian Minister of Trade Rachid Mohamed Rachid, speaking at the summit’s opening, said the Tunisian example serves as a warning that Arab governments need to accelerate economic reforms and that those reforms needed to be matched by simultaneous political reforms.

Already the Tunisian uprising has sparked a macabre series of copycat self-immolations that Arab governments must be closely watching. On Monday, less than an hour before Rachid and Moussa held a joint press conference, an Egyptian man set himself on fire in front of the country’s parliament. While the press conference was happening, I received an email that a man in Mauritania had done the same thing.

The situation is particularly nervous in Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak has ruled for longer than Bin Ali, and where the economic situation for many is dire and public frustration levels run high. Despite macroeconomic policy changes that have made Egypt the one of the models of international economic reform, nearly 20 per cent of Egypt’s 80m citizens live on less than USD 2 per day, the standard poverty line set by the UN.

Many Egyptian activists, inspired by the Tunisian revolution, are openly calling for a repetition of the scenario that ended Bin Ali’s reign. At an anti-government protest over the weekend in Cairo, demonstrators chanted “Congratulations to the Tunisians, we hope we join you soon” and “O Bin Ali tell Mubarak, ‘Your plane is waiting for you!’ ”

Egypt’s economic architects are mindful of the widespread public frustration, and say they are working to control spiraling costs of living while ensuring that more Egyptians feel the benefits of the country’s economic growth.

But Rachid, the trade minister, also stated that he didn’t believe Egypt was in danger of the same sort of widespread civil unrest, due to a comprehensive public subsidies package that ensures affordable fuel and basic food staples.

“Egypt is a different case than Tunisia. It’s not likely that a crisis like what’s happening in Tunisia will happen in Egypt,” he said. “Tunisia like many other Arab countries stopped subsidising food and petroleum items many years ago…It became very volatile to any changes in world prices, that’s why consumers were directly hit and consequently frustration escalated.”