20110211
The Guardian
The stubbornness of the beleaguered Egyptian president has embarrassed the army and endangered the people


Egypt's popular uprising seemed on course for a significant escalation – and possibly for direct military intervention – last night after a defiant Hosni Mubarak handed some powers to his vice-president but again flatly refused to bow to demands that he stand down at once.

Mubarak dashed what turned out to be catastrophically misplaced expectations that he was finally about to go – fuelled by apparent signs that the army was stepping in to ensure stability after more than two weeks of unprecedented unrest.

The president said he was committed to key constitutional amendments – though he gave no timetable – and announced a bigger, though undefined, role for Omar Suleiman, his newly appointed deputy and veteran intelligence chief.

In a bizarre performance on state TV, Mubarak played father to his people, self-centred, angry and above all determined not to be forced from office before September, when new presidential elections are due.

Looking grave, he repeated his most memorable line from his last big speech, vowing that he would "not leave this soil until I am buried underneath it" – a sharp reminder, amid speculation about retirement to Sharm al-Sheikh or medical treatment in Germany, that he will not follow in the footsteps of the deposed Tunisian leader Zine al-Abdine Bin Ali, now living in gilded exile in Saudi Arabia.

Suleiman, reviled by many opposition supporters as being too close to Mubarak, the US and Israel, pledged in a televised statement of his own that he was committed to an orderly transition, but warned that Egyptians would not be dragged into chaos or used as "tools for sabotage".

Mubarak's speech came at the end of an extraordinary day during which all the evidence seemed to indicate decisive intervention by the military, with officers telling protesters in Tahrir Square that their demands would be met.

Even more significantly, state TV broadcast pictures of the higher armed forces council meeting without Mubarak, the commander-in-chief, reinforcing the impression the generals and the defence minister, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, were moving against him. Tantawi is said to be close to and in close contact with the US government.

The council's statement – the title "communique number one" redolent of past military interventions in Egypt and across the Arab world – said it would "remain in continuous session to discuss what measures and arrangements could be taken to safeguard the homeland and its achievements, and the aspirations of the great Egyptian people". Omar Ashour, an Egyptian academic at Exeter University, said: "We may be seeing factional fighting inside the regime and in the end the Mubarak faction won. Or maybe we see him attempting to cling to power regardless of the views of the military. This is certainly embarrassing for them."

Mohamed ElBaradei, the nearest the fractured opposition has to a single well-known leader, said Egypt's fate now lay in the hands of the military. "The army must save the country now," he said.

The concessions Mubarak did offer, to amend key provisions of the constitution including hated anti-terrorist laws, are certainly important, but little more than small print in the big picture of thirst for radical change and profound mistrust of the regime's true intentions.

Mubarak portrayed himself as a patriot overseeing a stable and orderly transition until September — the date of an election in which he said last week neither he nor his son and onetime heir apparent Gamal would now stand.

Above all, the embattled president sang his own praises, reminding Egyptians – the silent majority – of his sacrifices as a war hero and his defence of the country's interests in peacetime. "I have lived for this nation," the former air force commander declared, visibly emotional about his own efforts. "I have exhausted my life defending the land and its sovereignty. I have faced death on my occasions. I never bent under foreign pressure. I never sought false power or popularity. I am certain that the majority of people are aware who Hosni Mubarak is." He clearly meant that those who were roaring their anger and disapproval for the world's TV cameras did not.

Ibrahaim Arafat, a political scientist at Qatar University, warned that Mubarak's defiant performance would radicalise the situation. "The more stubborn and defiant the president sounded, the more stubborn and defiant the street becomes," he told al-Jazeera TV, suggesting an attempt to provoke serious trouble to give the army a pretext to declare martial law.

"I think it is strange," political scientist Osama Ghazli Harb told Reuters news agency. "It means the president doesn't understand anything. I think it could be catastrophic. His intention is to continue in power in spite of the will of the people. For two weeks people have said, 'Go.' Now I'm afraid for the future."