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| Back to normal? |
Mubarak held his first cabinet meeting today since 25 January. Cairo once again honks, throbs and roars with traffic and the protesters have begun talks with Mubarak’s stooges. The curfew, which has been largely ignored in any event, has been shortened to run from 8pm to 6am. The Cairo Bourse took an enforced holiday on 27 January after it haemorrhaged nearly 20% in two days trading but it is now set to reopen for trading on Sunday.
Most people are thankful for these signs of a return to normality. According one Al Jazeera reporter in the city; "There are divisions. On one side, people do agree with the messages coming out of Tahrir Square, but on the other, Egypt is a country where about 40% of the population lives on daily wages."
Nevertheless, tens of thousands continue to occupy Tahrir Square and a memorial service was held there on Monday for 39-year Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud: a reporter for the state-run Al Tawuun newspaper who was shot by a sniper while filming police beating a protester from his office window in Lazoghly Square on 29 January.
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| Tahrir memorial service for murdered journalist Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud |
With an inscrutability therefore that hasn’t exactly been sphinx-like, the Egyptian security services, including the army, have attempted to play the role of honest brokers with varying degrees of verisimilitude over the course of the last week.
But as the protest movement now seems to be losing momentum and conceding to hold talks, the army’s mask has started slipping badly.
It’s also becoming pretty clear that getting Mubarak’s feet out from under the Presidential desk will probably necessitate prising his cold dead fingers from the walnut and leather-top veneer.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, which has until recently gone on the record stating that it would not negotiate with the government until Mubarak was gone, is now trying to polish the turd of explanation for their volte-face.
Brotherhood member Essam El-Erian, told reporters that it has to participate "in any dialogue that can meet the demands of the people".
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| The CIA's 'man in Cairo' Omar Suleiman (right) pictured with Israeli President Shimon Peres |
Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s former top spy chief and vice president since 29 January, used the meetings with the protesters on Sunday to offer a vague laundry list of reforms. These included the formation of a committee to examine proposed constitutional amendments; the pursuit of corrupt government officials and the ‘liberalisation of the media as well as lifting the state of emergency when the security situation was deemed to be appropriate. A state of emergency has existed since Mubarak came to power in 1981. Suleiman is described by Al Jazeera as having “long been the CIA’s main man in Cairo”.
None of this butters any parsnips with the protesters down on the barricades in Tahrir Square: "The political parties can do whatever they please because they don't represent us," a young woman told reporters. "This is not a revolution made by the parties. The parties have been there for 30 years and they've done nothing. This is the people's revolution," she added.
Evidence of the dark side of the police crackdown is also finding its way out. Military police involvement in the recent arrests of thousands of people including activists and foreign journalists is being alleged by human rights groups on the ground.
According to witnesses at the the Hisham Mubarak Legal Centre, up to 30 people were arrested at the centre which has had a pivotal role in recording the protests.
One of the detainees, lawyer Ahmed Saif al-Islam Hafez told reporters that he had heard screams from neighbouring cells which he felt were for his benefit. "They wanted me to hear this," he said. "They wanted to send a message."
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