Al Jazeera just had a telephone interview with a retired Egyptian general who suggested that the Higher Military Council would establish committees with representatives of civilian protest groups to oversee various aspects of governance, constitutional reform, and organizing for general elections in “three or four months.”
I’ve just read that Mubarak will be giving a speech at 1:30 EDT, 8:30 in Egypt. Rumors are that he’s already left Cairo for Sharm el-Sheik on the Red Sea and that he’ll be handing over power to a committee of the military.
Whoa. I remember seeing the headlines when Sadat was killed in 1981, when I was in high school. I wasn’t surprised that he immediately declared a “state of emergency” that lasts to this day since I’d grown up with random dictators and massacres all over the world, from Pol Pot to Idi Amin to Emperor Bokassa to the Gang of Four. No wonder we feathered our hair, wore too much polyester, and became ironically detached. I’ll be interested in seeing what happens.
So he’s not resigning, but he’s taking a leave of absence from active duties as president and handing over control to Suleiman before probably leaving the country.
Man… I can’t wait to read the full story of the behind-the-scense horse dealing that must have gone on this past week. I bet there must be at least three dozen world leaders with sore throats from talking on the phone.
He’s doing the “Is this far enough out into the hallway for you?” dance. “Is naming a VP far enough for you? No? How about if I take a vacation and let the VP run things for a little bit? No?”
Except that he isn’t doing that dance now. He’s been doing that dance all week - with his own army, with his government, with the Americans, with the EU, with China… what we’re seeing is the result of a massive unseen compromise cobbled together by virtually every powerful individual involved *except *the people in the square.
Or he thinks it’s a massive unseen compromise. Mubarak has been reading international reaction (including US) the way he wants to read it since this began.
That said, I never seem to actually “see” Mubarak as he is when I read these threads. For some reason, I always “see” Sadat as Mubarak. Weird.
<gets back from the gym where she watched the speech in a bad Arabic translation on CNN on silent gym TVs>
Oh yeah, the whole “dictator is leaving! Any minute now! Hang on, he said what? Oh. Sucks to be his people” thing also brings me back to my teenagerhood. Dang.