Mubarak to Remain as President
The New York Times reports:
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appeared on television late Friday night and ordered his government to resign, but backed his security forces’ attempts to contain the surging unrest around the country that has shaken his 28-year authoritarian rule.
He did not offer to step down himself and spent much of the short speech explaining the need for stability, saying that while he was “on the side of freedom,” his job was to protect the nation from chaos.
Several hours earlier, he had ordered the military into the streets to reinforce police struggling to contain riots by tens of thousands of Egyptians.
The president also imposed an overnight curfew nationwide, but demonstrators defied the order, remaining in the streets of the capital, setting fire to police cars and burning the ruling party headquarters to the ground. As smoke from the fires blanketed one of the city’s main streets along the Nile, crowds rushed the Interior Ministry and state television headquarters, but the military moved into the buildings to establish control. Protesters also tried to attack the American Embassy.
Senior Egyptian military commanders cut short a previously scheduled visit to the Pentagon to rush home to Cairo, American military officials said.
The demonstrations, on what protesters called a “day of wrath,” were on a scale far beyond anything in the memory of most residents and struck several cities besides the capital, including Suez, Alexandria and Port Said. At least one person died, in Suez, according to news reports, and the Interior Ministry said nearly 900 were injured in the Cairo area alone.
The unrest in Egypt — fueled by frustrations over government corruption, economic stagnation and a decided lack of political freedom — came after weeks of turmoil across the Arab world that toppled one leader in Tunisia and encouraged protesters to overcome deep-rooted fears of their authoritarian leaders and take to the streets. But Egypt is a special case: a heavyweight in Middle East diplomacy, in part because of its peace treaty with Israel, and a key ally of the United States.
The country, often the fulcrum on which currents in the region turn, also has one of the largest and most sophisticated security forces in the Middle East.
Calling out the military is a signal of how dramatically the situation had spiraled out of control after four days of demonstrations. The army, one of the country’s most powerful and respected institutions, prefers to remain behind the scenes and has not been sent into the streets since 1986.
But the police, a much reviled force prone to violent retribution against anyone who publicly defies the state, appeared unable to quell the unrest despite a heavy-handed response that included beatings of protesters and the firing of a water cannon at Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei. In several cases in the capital and elsewhere, the police were forced to back down by throngs of protesters.
In one of the most arresting scenes of the day, in Alexandria, protesters snatched batons, shields and helmets from the police. Honking cars drove up and down a main street, holding police riot shields and truncheons out the windows as trophies.
In both Cairo and Alexandria, some army patrols were greeted with applause and waves from the crowds — a seemingly incongruous response from demonstrators who say they want to bring down the president. But many people support the army for its success in shocking the Israeli Army with a surprise attack in 1973 and for its perceived reluctance, at least in the past, to get involved in politics.
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