Whither Egypt's surprising show of discontent?

Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist

For almost two weeks, nightly cable news fills with images of popular discontent expressed in huge demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Cairo, an ancient city, ranked about 16 among the most densely populated metropolitan areas of the world, with just under 10 million inhabitants in the city itself and over 10 million at its outskirts, is normally very busy. Egypt's capital, apart from being home to a multitude, is also the country's business hub and the people have commandeered its most important location. It's as if Britons took over Whitehall and Parliament Square in London. Their call is for President Hosni Mubarak to leave, now!

Who would have thought this possible three weeks ago? Foreigners are leaving, tourism is spooked and demonstrators plan to host a million in the square this Friday. But President Mubarak refuses to go until September, arguing that his immediate departure would mean chaos. Perhaps predictably, his political thugs unleashed that very chaos of which he spoke. They came on camel, on horseback and on foot, wielding clubs and other makeshift weapons, presumably to appear as an authentic anti-opposition movement.

The economy loses millions of dollars daily as Egypt looks set to sacrifice much of the modest economic gains it has been able to register in the last two decades. But power is too good to give up at the first sign of real protest. Egypt has elections, but that's just a name. The ruling party gets almost 100 per cent of the vote. For three decades, Mubarak has ruled with an iron fist, so why has this uprising been allowed to smoulder unchecked for a fortnight?

The answer is changed conditions. It is difficult to rank influences in a revolutionary situation, but discontent among the mass of the population is surely a factor. Food prices, specifically wheat - complements of Wall Street speculation - place a heavy burden on the population. The middle and professional classes are fed up with the corruption and brutality openly displayed by a regime that feels itself immune from scrutiny. Internet communications, cellphones, Facebook, Twitter - social media - all play their role. Only hindsight informs the regime that the Tunisian revolt the week before, has so altered the chessboard and rules of engagement that democratic change may be the only feasible lasting outcome.

Yet, there is no certainty this will be the result. The people have neither an agreed platform nor leadership. Mubarak seeks to exploit this. The army, however, appears to be hedging its bets under Defence Minister Mohamed Tantawi, who actually visited and talked to the people-occupiers of the square. Minutes before Tantawi's arrival, two F16 fighter jets flew low over the square. The commander in chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces made an orchestrated entrance fitting his status! In his mind must have been the images of the people kissing his soldiers and the peoples' apparent commitment to non-violence. He kept the thugs away from them with barbed wire and a thick smokescreen. Could it be that he is the one that shall emerge?

Situations of a revolutionary kind are never tidy. There is an interim, a momentary vacuum that must be rapidly filled. President Obama would like to achieve this transition smoothly. He knows, however, that United States' embrace of the demonstrators could become a crushing bear hug. So his trusted ally, in the region so important to Western commerce, has to be let down gingerly.

Back home, our own two-week spectacle is perhaps interesting only for its high cost banality. My taxi driver says it's a joke. "We kill more than 70 people, an ina Egyp dem nuh kill 10 (at the time of writing). But we caan check fih dat! Dis ya commission a waste money and people time!" He says police and soldiers wore masks during the incursion into Tivoli Gardens so no one knows who did what. On the matter of Clarke's killing, my market vendor of 30 years says, "it a wicked ack fi dem blow away the man deh inna im own house!"

Is it that the constant reports of killings by gangs and the police make Jamaicans immune to outrage and resistant to empathy? Does this make Jamaicans able to accept, in their unaltered stride, what others see as a horrible reality? Is it that we believe human life may be valued by criteria other than live breath, so that one particular life trumps another in value?

wilbe65@yahoo.com