by Shmuel Even
INSS / Canada Free Press

The standard of living of the lower class in Egypt is particularly low, at the level of basic existence, because the average income is much lower than the international average and because the country lacks advanced mechanisms of social welfare available in developed nations. As a result of urbanization, more than two-thirds of the Egyptian population work in services, trade, and industry, and unlike in the past, have no access to sources of food in the rural areas.

The protests are popular in nature and do not seem to be directed by the Islamic opposition (although the protests were joined by Islamic elements). The lack of a central organization responsible for the events makes it difficult for the regime to identify targets to suppress.

President Mubarak is currently facing the biggest challenge to his regime since taking office close to thirty years ago. On January 28, after several days of violent demonstrations throughout Egypt, the 82-year old Mubarak called on the army to quell the unrest, announcing he “would not allow anything to threaten the peace, law, and future of the country.”

On January 29, Mubarak appointed Omar Suleiman, head of Egyptian intelligence, to the post of vice president, and charged Ahmed Shafiq, a former Egyptian air force commander and the new prime minister, with the task of forming a new government to undertake reforms and calm the masses. At the time of this writing, the crisis is in full force and definitive outcomes cannot be predicted.

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by Dibussi Tande
AllAfrica.com

The Arabist comments on the ongoing protests in Egypt, inspired by the recent Tunisian protests that led to the collapse of the Ben Ali regime:

‘The most significant thing about today’s protests across Egypt is that their scale was totally unexpected. Yes, there has been a wave of protests since late 2004. But none have been nationwide to this extent, and none have been as big. We still do not have a clear picture of what transpired in much of the country, and media focus tended to be on the main protest in Cairo’s Midan Tahrir. But that is enough to know that these may be the biggest protest movement since at least the 1977 bread riots and perhaps even the biggest since the 1950s.

‘It was not predictable, just like Tunisia, because it was an unknown unknown – we did not know that the threshold for such an event had been reached, partly because previous protests had fizzled out or were effectively contained by the regime. While we (here I mean the press, analysts, and activists) knew many Egyptians were tired of the current state of affairs, we did not know that an external change (what happened in Tunisia) could have this kind of impact on a country that, after all, has been protesting for years and that is nowhere as repressive and controlled as Tunisia was under Ben Ali … Today, a red line has been irrevocably crossed, a barrier of fear transcended.

‘What tomorrow brings is anyone’s guess. The regime might contain and diffuse this, but will probably have to make some significant concessions (such as Minister of Interior Habib al-Adly’s head, for a start). Or it might snowball into something much bigger.’

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