Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak may be on an outbound flight soon but that will not be the end of this saga of the people’s rebellion. He may give up, but the authoritarian system he established and which nourished him will stay. Changing that will be much harder than ousting the President.
Mubarak is looking for a dignified way out. He has been an emperor. He wants to leave without humiliation. To that end on Tuesday, he offered not to stand for the Presidency and finish his term next September. But nobody seems to be buying that.
Egyptians say Barack Obama is looking for ways to help Mubarak make an honorable exit. But the more important point concerns how the government apparatus, highly expert at repression but unfamiliar with accountability, can be replaced without prolonged chaos. There is justified fear that a power vacuum may be filled stealthily by Islamic totalitarians or robber barons since there is no opposition of the left, center or right experienced in clean government. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, often feared in the West, is estimated to have just 20% of the people behind it despite its social good works and grassroots organization.
The authoritarian system’s construction goes back to 1956, when Gamal Abdel Nasser, an army lieutenant colonel, became President. In 1952, he helped to depose the Egyptian king, and became the number two in a transition government. Two years later, he ordered perhaps the largest political repression in Egyptian history and arrested over 20,000 Islamic sympathizers and communists. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which claims to be Egypt’s first freedom fighter against British colonialists since 1928, have been jailed and tortured regularly since the time of Nasser and into recent days.
Any semblance of democracy ended with Nasser, who began establishing the tough authoritarian regime (hopefully) now in its final throes. A socialist influenced by the Soviet Union, he nationalized the Suez Canal upsetting the British and the West but was feted in Arab countries as a modern founder of Arab nationalism. Soviet methods of secret police, muzzled media and denial of freedom of expression became the role model.
An army comrade, Anwar al Sadat, succeeded Nasser in 1970 and won a Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Israel in 1979. But he ruled with a fist tougher than his predecessor. He suppressed all political opposition from the left or Islamic groups, especially after corruption allegations against him became loud in 1977. An Islamic fundamentalist assassinated him in 1981 at a ceremonial military parade.
That gave successor Mubarak an excuse for more repression. He never removed the Emergency law enforced after the assassination. His generals and civilian leaders, engorged with over $1.3 billion in US aid annually for 30 years, turned corruption and arrogance into a lifestyle.
In recent days, Mubarak has soft-pedaled his record while trying to prolong the institutions and systems of governance that implemented his severe rule. Perhaps, he is thinking of January 1977, when massive riots took place, bringing people by the hundred thousand to the streets crying out for low-priced bread, food and less economic hardship. Sadat made some concessions and got through the rest with repression. Things are different now. We are in a globalized world marked by social networking and informed demonstrators, where people around the world are watching Mubarak’s every move in real time.
Egyptians are mostly submissive to authority but periodically the safety valves burst and they demonstrate by the tens of thousands. This has happened regularly since the 1920s. Each time, the government made a few concessions and beat down the resisters. It seems the time for that is over, definitely.