Egyptians rush into each other’s arms, crying tears of joy. On Tahrir Square in Cairo, Radio Netherlands reporter Hans Jaap Melissen describes the euphoric response to the news that President Mubarak’s 30-year rule has come to an end. Hans Jaap reports from a ninth-floor apartment overlooking the square, a meeting place for the bloggers who kept the revolution alive online.
“From the balcony you have a wonderful view of Tahrir Square – Liberation Square – overflowing with people and living up to its name. They are celebrating liberation at last, after a desperately disappointing Thursday evening. I was at this apartment yesterday too. People were angry and dejected, but they kept on hoping that the coming days would bring a solution.”
When the news of Mubarak’s departure was announced, Hans Jaap Melissen saw huge crowds of people surge towards the square. “I was in a side street where a few people were sitting around watching TV. All of a sudden came the news that an important announcement was imminent. People leapt to their feet as if they had just seen the deciding goal in a nail-biting football match. They embraced each other and immediately ran to the square. That’s the place where everyone wants to be to share in this moment. The whole square was one huge outpouring of emotion.”
New era
The army will take over the president’s duties. Hans Jaap Melissen says it is still unclear exactly what that means.
“I took a brief trip to the presidential palace. It’s being guarded to the hilt. I think the military will look for a civilian figure to take over the running of the country. But at the moment, no one knows for sure. The news is still too fresh to draw any conclusions.”
Having spent almost the last two weeks in Cairo, Hans Jaap believes the last thing Egypt wants is to project the image of a coup d’état with the power in hands of the military. “This is not only the end of Mubarak, but also the beginning of a new era: the era of democracy. The people around me are hugging each other with joy, but they also know it will take Egypt many years to gradually shake off the corrupt, totalitarian system and police state that existed under Mubarak for all those years.”
Money disappearing
And what of Mubarak? What’s going to happen to him? “He has a holiday retreat in Sharm el-Sheikh. I don’t know whether his safety there has been guaranteed. People are also calling for him to be prosecuted. Especially now that there are stories of large amounts of money disappearing. That has made people very angry. But it’s not clear whether Mubarak is still in Sharm el-Sheikh or whether he has followed in the footsteps of Tunisia’s former president and is already in Saudi Arabia,” says Hans Jaap, while the crowds behind him continue to celebrate.
“Nobody knows what the coming days will bring. What I do know is that Mubarak is gone and the people of Egypt finally have the liberation they fought so hard to win for almost three weeks.”
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Danger lies ahead:-
Richer than Mubarak: Junta’s Stranglehold on Egypt’s Economy Imperils Reform
By Jason Ditz
With reports putting his personal fortune upwards of $70 billion, it isn’t hard to imagine why aging dictator Hosni Mubarak was so resistant to the notion of wholesale changes in Egypt. After all, it was the status quo that allowed him to steal the world’s single largest personal fortune.
But these same factors could be at work inside the Egyptian military, which itself controls far more of the Egyptian economy and directly owns far more assets than even the ousted tyrant. With the military now directly in control, those same reforms could imperil their own collective fortunes.
Egypt’s “military” is far from just a military of some half a million poorly paid conscripts, you see. When they reached a peace deal with Israel in 1979, the military sought to justify its enormous size by setting about producing weapons of war and its own supplies. As time went on, those tax free and regulation free factories and farms quickly moved into the public sector, and the military is now amongst the region’s largest bottled water producer, grows 20 percent of its food, and manufactures large portions of its appliances. They even manufacture automobiles and shampoo.
Which is where things get messy. No one really knows how big Egypt’s military is, its industrial holdings are all “off-budget” and its profits never show up on the bottom line of anything publicly available. It is quite well documented that the off-budget wealth has funded considerable largesse for the military’s leadership, with palatial estates set aside for high ranking officers.
As this new junta looks to crack down against the protesters and especially union organizers it seems increasingly that the force, though swept into power as an “interim” ruler with a mandate for wholesale reform to Egyptian society, sees its own fabulous wealth imperilled by the prospective freedom of the population. To that end, the protesters being chased off the street may have traded in the world’s richest tyrant for the only group whose wealth and avarice surpass his, the Egyptian military leadership.
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/13/richer-than-mubarak-juntas-strangleho...
Thanks Hans Jaap Melissen for reporting from Egypt, amidst chaotic events. It must be an electrifying feeling to see history made, with thousands of Egyptians celebrating the great and rarest of rare moment!
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