Mubarak’s Egypt is often compared to Iran in the last days of the Shah: a middle class squeezed by inflation; anger at the regime’s alliances with the US and Israel; a profound sense of humiliation that is increasingly expressed in Islamic fervour; near universal contempt for the country’s ruling class; a state whose legitimacy has almost entirely eroded.
In 2005, the Egyptian Movement for Change – a coalition of leftists, Nasserists and Islamists better known as Kifaya (‘Enough’) – staged a series of demonstrations in downtown Cairo, where, for the first time, Egyptians dared to criticise Mubarak in public, and to call for him to step down. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have demonstrated: leftists and Islamists calling for an end to the Emergency Law; judges denouncing constitutional amendments that strip them of their right to supervise elections; workers striking for better wages and independent trade unions; poor farmers on land redistributed under Nasser defending themselves against attempts by large landowners – often with the backing of the state, sometimes with the help of armed thugs – to ‘reclaim’ their property.
The spread of these protests, on a scale not seen since the 1970s, when left-wing students mobilised against Sadat’s infitah and his alliance with the West, has led some observers to see this as Egypt’s ‘moment of change’, the subtitle of an informative new anthology on Egyptian social movements.
Read the full article here.
In 2005, the Egyptian Movement for Change – a coalition of leftists, Nasserists and Islamists better known as Kifaya (‘Enough’) – staged a series of demonstrations in downtown Cairo, where, for the first time, Egyptians dared to criticise Mubarak in public, and to call for him to step down. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have demonstrated: leftists and Islamists calling for an end to the Emergency Law; judges denouncing constitutional amendments that strip them of their right to supervise elections; workers striking for better wages and independent trade unions; poor farmers on land redistributed under Nasser defending themselves against attempts by large landowners – often with the backing of the state, sometimes with the help of armed thugs – to ‘reclaim’ their property.
The spread of these protests, on a scale not seen since the 1970s, when left-wing students mobilised against Sadat’s infitah and his alliance with the West, has led some observers to see this as Egypt’s ‘moment of change’, the subtitle of an informative new anthology on Egyptian social movements.
Read the full article here.
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