Full Circle in Egypt?

The verdict today acquitting Husni Mubarak on the murder and other serious charges that were facing him seems to drive the final nail in the coffin of the January 25 Revolution. But before one assumes that this is the end, note that there have been only limited improvements in the economy and the "stability" promised by the government is anything but in evidence. the next explosion may be far less peaceful than what happened in 2011, when most of the violence came from the Mubarak side. (Though now that everyone charged with killing protesters has had charges dropped, perhaps they all died some other way?)

I'm sure I'll have more to say in coming days.

Intissar Amer (Madame al-Sisi): First Lady or Invisible Consort? The Many Styles of Egypt's First Ladies

The photo above shows a rare appearance of then-Field Marshal Sisi in public with his wife, Intissar Amer. It dispelled rumors that she wears he full veil, but indications so far re that she will keep a low public profile when she becomes Egypt's First Lady. During the Presidencies of Anwar Sadat and Husni Mubarak, when the title "First Lady" was applied as a semi-official title and the incumbents had a highly-visible public profile. made the President's wife a public figure on he world stage, but not all of Egypt's first ladies have been as high-profile  as Jehan Sadat and Suzanne Mubarak.

Under the monarchy, of  course, the queens had a high public profile. Fuad I's Queen, Nazli, and Farouq's Queens, Farida and, after their divorce, Nariman, were given the public roles due to royalty on the European model. Of Middle Eastern monarchies, Egypt and Jordan gave their queens high levels of publicity and  public role, unlike Morocco or the Arab Gulf monarchies. But there has been considerable variation since the fall of the monarchy. Omitting transitional and interim figures:

Muhammad Naguib's wife, ‘A'isha Muhammad Labib, who was at least his second wife, played no real public role and remains little known. Some references even give her the first name ‘Aziza.

Nasser and Tahia's Wedding

Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser's wife had a more public role, though not nearly as visible as her two successors. Tahia Kazem, also called Tahia ‘Abdel Nasser,was the daughter of an Iranian father and Egyptian-Iranian mother. She was frequently photographed with her husband and children but did not have the high profile public role of her two successors.

During Nasser's Presidency

Tahia, who died in 1990, wrote a memoir of her life with Nasser which was not intended for publication. It was finally published in 2011 in Arabic, and last year in English. She thus joined, belatedly, Jehan Sadat in publishing her memoirs.

Jehan Sadat

Anwar Sadat's wife, Jehan, became the first Egyptian First Lady to play a major role in public, and to achieve international fame.in her own right. Jehan Safwat Ra'ouf, better known as Jehan El Sadat, married Sadat in 1949, shortly after his divorce from his first wife, Iqbal Mahdi, by whom he had three daughters. Jehan was the teenaged daughter of an Egyptian doctor and his British wife. (Many Egyptians believe that her mother was actually Maltese, but public documents show her mother was from Sheffield, as she asserts in her memoir. Some suggest the Maltese rumor may have originated when the Free Officers did not want to seem linked to the British occupation.) During the Sadat years the term First Lady (al-Sayyida al-Ula) began to be regularly, if unofficially, used. After Sadat's assassination, Jehan worked to keep his legacy alive, in part through the Anwar Sadat Chair at the University of Maryland. where she is a senior fellow.

Suzanne Mubarak

Husni Mubarak's wife. Suzanne Thabet, officially known as Suzanne Mubarak, is, like her predecessor, the daughter of an Egyptian doctor and a British mother, in her case a Welsh nurse. Like her predecessor she had a high profile, founded or was patron of schools and charities, and is believed to have been a strong supporter that her younger son Gamal should succeed his father. She was reported to be writing her memoirs before the Revolution broke out, and after the revolution Rose al-Youssef published what it claimed were excerpts, but many believe these, such as other leaks purporting to be her husbands memoirs, are a hoax.The source is highly dubious, to be generous.

Muhammad Morsi's wife, Nagla' ‘Ali Mahmoud, was a striking departure from her two fashionable predecessors. She wore the hijab, flatly refused to be called First Lady (saying she preferred "Umm Ahmad"), but she did give occasional interviews and discuss her role.

Which brings us to Madame Sisi, Intissar Amer. Sisi has said that they met in secondary school and he married her on graduation from the Military Academy in 1977. She is said to dislike public appearances and has not pursued a career, preferring to raise her family. She does not dress as conservatively as rumors speculated, but modestly, at least based on that one photo, but from what is known of her she is likelier to follow the Tahia Nasser model than the Jehan Sadat or Suzanne Mubarak one.

Nael Shama in Le Monde Diplo: "Understanding Cairo" and How its Presidents Haven't

A hat tip to Ursula Lindsey at The Arabist  for my belated discovery of this gem from Nael Shama at Le Monde Dipomatique in English: "Understanding Cairo." Egypt's Presidents (with one exception) are assessed as not understanding the capital. Read it all, but it offers such a refreshing insight and a new spin on recent events that I think it deserves rather extensive excerpts:

Modern Egyptian rulers failed to unravel the secrets of the city, abandoning it at times, unleashing their wrath against it at other times — always failing to understand it. They mistook Cairo’s patience for apathy, overlooking the fact that, like all old cities, it is both wise and resilient. It smiles in the face of hardships, bears the ebbs of time with a strong heart, but in response to tyrants, it doesn’t murmur: it shouts.

President Anwar Sadat sought solace in his village house in Mit Abu El-Kom, in Menoufia Governorate, away from Cairo’s political traffic jams. Sadat was not returning to his roots in a quest to consolidate family ties or evoke sweet childhood memories. Sadat hated Cairo and its unruly people . . .

Likewise, from the late 1990s until 2011, President Hosni Mubarak — and his “royal” entourage — spent long periods of time in the resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh, far away from Cairo’s oven-like heat and suffocating air pollution . . .

. . . In the tranquility of his comfortable exile, Mubarak could block out what had become of Egypt during his three-decade rule: a despairing nation, a corrupt and dysfunctional state, a failing economy addicted to foreign largesse, crumbling services, an ailing infrastructure, a population boom (more than a million new souls every year), a fading grandeur replaced by a pitiable image in the region and beyond. Yet Mubarak’s flight to the periphery did not bring the core to rest: Cairo bent under Mubarak, but it did not break. Eventually, Cairenes flocked to Tahrir Square, Cairo’s (and Egypt’s) center, to seal Mubarak’s fate.

. . . Morsi’s downfall was also partly because he didn’t understand Cairo. Despite the MB’s successive ballot box victories in post-Mubarak Egypt, it was Cairo that slowed down the group’s foray into the territory abandoned by Mubarak and his defeated, dissolved party. In Cairo, Morsi lost both rounds of the presidential elections (May-June 2012) as well as the referendum on the constitution (December 2012).

Morsi visited Tahrir Square only once after his election victory. This visit came on his first day as president, in order to celebrate his victory among his supporters and, in hindsight, to pay farewell to the central square of a city he so quickly and foolishly lost. Morsi remained oblivious to the threat posed by Cairo’s recalcitrance until the very end.

The exception? Who's left?:

Only Nasser — who clipped the wings of the aristocracy and uplifted the poor, creating a viable middle class — bonded with Cairo. The expansion in education and health services and the establishment of an industry-oriented public sector gave rise to, and consolidated, Egypt’s middle class in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, he vowed steadfastness against the tripartite aggression (Suez) from the rostrum of the widely revered Al-Azhar mosque, in the heart of Cairo’s old Islamic city. “I am here in Cairo with you and my children are also here in Cairo. I did not send them away [for protection from air raids],” he said, to affirm his loyalty to the city.

Nasser did not travel much during his reign. He was not a big fan of the tourist retreats of Egypt’s pre-revolution aristocracy. He stayed in Cairo, and there he died. In the autumn of 1970, Nasser resided for a few days in Cairo’s posh Nile Hilton during the emergency Arab summit convened to put an end to the bloody Palestinian-Jordanian conflict — Black September. On the night of September 27th, on the balcony of his hotel room that overlooked River Nile, Kasr El-Nil Bridge and the lights of the city that never sleeps, he told his friend Mohamed Heikal: “This is the best view in the world.” On the following day, he died.

There's a genuine truth in this piece, and one that goes far to explain the deep differences among Egyptians today. Read the whole thing, though. At least twice.

EIPR on Mubarak's Legal Status

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has a useful FAQ on the legal status of Husni Mubarak's various cases. Since most of the Western media is just reporting "Mubarak released" without any sense of the process, this is very useful. He's out of jail, but not out of the legal woods yet. (But he's also not nearly as dead as the last time he died, in June 2012. He got better.)

Making the Rounds: Mubarak 2014?

Talk about fallul:

"Mubarak 2014 President of Egypt: Restoring Egypt to its Place."

It's a joke, of course. Isn't it?

Please reassure me.

Changing Times, Changing Names

I'm fairly tied up with Journal work today so here's something light to ponder, via Facebook:
the sign says "Hajj Badie and his Brothers Agency: formerly 'Sons of President Mubarak'."

Mubarak Back in Tura; Lawyers Trying to Get Him Out

A month or so after that strange week when Egypt's Schrödinger's ex-President Husni Mubarak was reported by the State News Agency MENA to be clinically dead, but then he got much, much better, he was transported back to Tura Prison yesterday because, well, he's not dead anymore and he's supposed to be serving a life sentence, not receiving excellent treatment in an elite military hospital.

Tura Prison

His lawyers are trying to get him sent back to the hospital because there is a law saying heroes of the 1973 war must be respected and because Mubarak is a hero of the 1973 war. (In point of fact his role in the 1973 war, as Air Force Commander, has gotten more and more heroic since he became President in 1981, a sort of retroactive heroism. If he'd been President much longer they'd have had him manning a SAM site and shooting down Israeli aircraft single-handed.)

Schrödinger's Ex-President

Meaning no disrespect to an obviously ailing, and just yesterday dead, Husni Mubarak, but it occurs to me that we may finally have a real-world embodiment of that quantum physics paradox known as Schrödinger's Cat. As Wikipedia simplifies it:

According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; quite the reverse, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum. 

Although the most recent claim is that Mubarak is not only not clinically dead any more but just slipped and fell in the bathroom,  it seems his apparent alive-and-dead-at-the-same-time status yesterday may have given us our first proof of the Schrödinger's Cat thesis, but it's a longtime world leader as well.

"Clinically Dead" Mubarak is All Better Now?

Apparently he was dead yesterday but he got better. He's "conscious and stable. He's not mechanically ventilated."

So what irresponsible tabloid was it that proclaimed him "clinically dead" yesterday? Why, just the official state news agency, MENA. Of course I can't be sure he's really conscious; this condition might prove as transient as his death proved to be.

I empathize with the ailing man, but is it any wonder that many protesters are assuming that the whole Mubarak-is-dying interlude is an attempt to divert attention from the outrage over the dissolution of Parliament?  Just because you're a conspiracy theorist doesn't mean they're not plotting against you.

UPDATE: Now he just slipped and fell in the bathroom.  Next: just a hangnail all along?

Some Days, Everything is Happening at Once, and then Mubarak Dies or Doesn't

Some of those things may be true. (The monkey is in a cage in a Cairo nightclub and its welfare is today's Internet sensation; there'll be no more about it in this post.) With both Presidential candidates claiming victory, crowds assembled in Tahrir to show the military their strength, and the future of the revolution in great doubt, while official results of the election aren't due until Thursday (why, when others have published unofficial tallies?), it's not surprising that rumors are rampant. And then came Husni Mubarak's health crisis. This post is going to use Twitter posts to capture some of the day. As one post put it:

As I write this it appears that Mubarak is still among the living, though earlier the official state news agency said he was clinically dead. Unlike many of the previous times he has "died," he was clearly in a health crisis: he was rushed from Tura Prison to the Maadi Military Hospital today, reportedly after his heart stopped three times and he had to be resuscitated. A glimpse of the confusion on Twitter:

Mubarak's death has been rumored so many times that it has even generated a website, ismubarakdead.com,  which is still returning a "NO" at this writing. But the fact that he apparently is at death's door raises the question of what his death at this time might mean in the present tense circumstances. In the meantime, I'll hold off the obituary until we know more.

But while we're discussing the tensions in Egypt, don't miss Nathan Brown's fuller assessment of the constitutional declaration at Carnegie: "Egyptian Political System in Disarray."

Another exchange from the crazy day:

And finally, let Mahmoud Salem, aka "Sandmonkey," have the last word:

Husni's Got Those Tura Prison Blues

I hear the train a comin'
It's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine,
Since, I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Tura Prison,
And time keeps draggin' on,

(With my sincerest apologies to the estate of Johnny Cash)

The Egyptian and Arab media has been a bit preoccupied with the Big Man's first days in the Big House. After the verdict Saturday in which former President Husni Mubarak was sentenced to life imprisonment, he apparently boarded the helicopter which brought him to the court expecting to be returned to his suite at the International Medical Center where he has spent the months of the trial. When the helicopter landed instead at the notorious Tura Prison outside of Cairo, Mubarak reportedly refused to disembark for some two hours. Some reports say three.

Based upon this summary of the Egyptian papers, Al-Wafd is reporting he has treated the warden as if he were still President and kicked out all his nurses; AL-Shorouk reports he passed out three times while being checked in to the prison hospital, and demanded that his personal staff be transferred from the International Medical Center, which was denied. Also:

Al-Shorouk’s coverage also includes a moment of Shakespearean self-reflection, with Mubarak reportedly overheard wondering aloud, “What will come after the sentencing of Mubarak? What else is there to be desired after all that has taken place?” The paper reports: “[Mubarak] then began shouting, ‘May God punish those responsible for sending me to jail, this is unjust! Unjust! I have always been with the people,’ before surrendering to sleep until the morning.”

Forgive me if I suspect Al-Shorouk here of the old Egyptian journalistic tactic known in the trade as "just plain making stuff up.

Some reports say his son was allowed to spend the night with him, but the official press reports say he had to spend the night alone.  Suzanne Mubarak and the two daughters-in-law have visited him in prison.

It's also been reported that he rejected wearing prison uniform, and Al-Ahram says he may be exempted.

One reason for the fascination with Mubarak's life in prison is, of course, the rarity of a deposed President ending up in prison after an actual judicial trial, as opposed to a coup. As well as, of course, the "how the mighty have fallen" aspect, and the irony that Tura prison has a long reputation as the repository of political prisoners. (I plan to post soon on the prison's history. As noted last year, it may have been founded  on the very day Mubarak was born.) And perhaps the media hopes to defuse anger about the sentence, or reports de-emphasizing the life sentence and noting that Mubarak will be eligible for parole in 25 years. (When he will be 109. But some people seem angry he could get out that soon.) Perhaps, too, they want to emphasize he really is in jail, since some reports of his suite at the International Medical Center emphasized he had several rooms for visitors, and a pool.

With renewed apologies to the Johnny Cash estate:

I bet there's rich folks eatin',
In a fancy dining car,
They're probably drinkin' coffee,
And smokin' big cigars,
But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

Well, if they freed me from this prison,
If that railroad train was mine,
I bet I'd move out over a little,
Farther down the line,
Far from Tura Prison,
That's where I want to stay,
And I'd let that lonesome whistle,
Blow my Blues away.
 

The Verdict: Life. So Why is Everyone So Angry?

When I woke thus morning I checked my phone for news headlines and learned the verdict in Mubarak's case was life imprisonment. Given his age, any sentence was likely to mean he would end his days in (possibly comfortable) custody, and it seemed a judicious judgment to me: no one really expected they sere going to impose a death sentence, and it seemed harsh enough to satisfy all but the most bloodthirsty, while an acquittal would provoke outrage. I thought it was probably going to be an acceptable decision.

Qasr al-Nil Bridge

I'm sure that for many, it is. What the headline alone did not disclose, however, was the fact that only Mubarak and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly received life sentences; everyone else, the Mubarak sons, the senior police and State Security officials, were acquitted.

Mohammed Mahmoud
 by AUC Graffiti Wall

Assembling in Tahrir

As the crowds erupted in demonstrations all over Egypt, reporters have had no trouble finding protesters who are calling for execution, and perhaps are missing finding the more nuanced view of those who are most outraged by acquittals of all but the top two men. (Don't we all remember pictures of Mubarak and Adly, standing alone shoulder to shoulder, gunning down protesters as the State Security forces looked on in horror? Me neither.) Others are worried on legal grounds that because the prosecution did not call every potential witness nor introduce every piece of evidence, the verdict has set up a scenario for the Court of Cassation to void the sentence on appeal, and everybody gets off scot free. (Part of the case might be: if all the lower-echelon police generals and heads were innocent, how can the two top bosses be guilty?)

Tahrir tonight

I suspect, too, that a lot of the outpouring into the streets today is a response not just to the verdict, but to the result of the first round of Presidential elections. First, the revolution seems about to end in either the  bang of a Muslim Brotherhood President and Parliament or the whimper of a neo-Mubarak in the person of Gen. Shafiq; then comes the verdict which, if at first seeming to be a stiff one for Mubarak and Adly, on reflection seems to have punished only the figureheads and left untouched those who actually gave the order to fire.

Tahrir After Dark

Whether today's huge outpourings are transient or a sign of renewed confrontation remains to be seen. The Brotherhood's candidate, Morsi, is said to be in the square, along with several of the failed Presidential candidates. The Brotherhood missed out on the initial revolutionary fervor last year and doesn't want to make that mistake again.

There was already a lot of anger and frustration after the elections, in which the revolutionaries found that sometimes democracy doesn't produce the result you dreamt it would; but other than denouncing Shafiq there was no great rallying point. Now the frustration is shared by many, including the Islamists, who were content with the electoral results. This could provide fuel for a rough runoff campaign and new violence.

Would the results of the election have been different if the verdict had come first? The Arabist labels as "Pic of the Day" this one of Hamdeen Sabahi crowd-surfing in the Tahrir protesters: and remember, he ran a rather close third behind Morsi and Shafiq. (Note: flag in foreground with green stripe is the Free Syrian flag):

Backgrounders for the Mubarak Verdict Tomorrow

The Mubarak verdict should come down in the morning. I'll try to post on it some time over the weekend but family commitments may slow down my posting, but here are a couple of backgrounders to understand the results, whichever way it goes:

• A Human Rights Watch Q&A on the trial and the charges;
• Zeinobia's blog has  the basic stats and numbers on the trial.
• A timeline of the trial from Ahram Online.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is in a guesthouse in Jidda and Mu‘ammar Qadhafi is dead; only Mubarak, so far, has faced a court. As I noted earlier a small army of 20,000 police and security forces and 160 armored vehicles are reportedly being deployed around where the court is sitting.

Egypt's Hobson's Choice: Rock or Hard Place?

from April 6 Movement

It's been a week now since Egypt's election results became clear and it became rather obvious that the two candidates left standing were about the most polarized choice possible: the Muslim Brother and the fallul, the Old Regime remnant. Mubarak always said the only choice was him or the Brotherhood, and his prophecy seems fulfilled: Shafiq is a former Air Force commander, facing charges of corruption already.

I have held off on long analysis, posting mostly on specific developments, but as this runoff gathers speed I want to finally take a shot at it. I assume my readers have been following the commentary on the subject, but especially want to note the pieces by Marc Lynch, The Arabist (of several posts, especially "Why Accept These Elections?"),  Magdy Samaan,  Mirette Mabrouk, Barbara Slavin on the reaction here in Washington, VJ Um Amel at JAdaliyya on Twitter, Hani Shukrullah in Ahram Online, and many more. There is a huge body of commentary already out there; perhaps I'm not going to add much here, but I'll try.

You also need to study these maps from Ahram Online, showing how the vote broke down by candidate and governorate. Let me start with this pie chart from that source:

Ahram Online

The electorate did not split between Morsi and Shafiq: they each took about a quarter; the other three candidates split just over half among them. A slight increase would have pushed Sabahi (Sabbahi here) past Shafiq. What is in fact striking is the degree to which this was a five-man race, though only two could be in the runoff. Only about half of eligible voters voted, and the results split five ways to all intents and purposes (the remaining candidates being marginal). Here:

Ahram Online

The results weren't polarized but spread across a spectrum, but the two survivors happen to represent the most extreme poles. Complaints that "5 million shouldn't decide for 50 million [eligible voters]" aren't really valid; the vote was genuinely diverse. As Marc Lynch put it:

It's important to keep the results in perspective.   The results look less surprising once it's recognized that the two most powerful forces in Egypt won the first round.  Neither did especially well.  The Muslim Brotherhood won 25%, which is just about exactly where most experts have pegged their popular support for years and is significantly lower than in the Parliamentary elections.  Another quarter of the vote went to the SCAF's candidate, Shafik, likely reflecting the widespread reality of popular exhaustion with the revolution.  Neither of those results should be a surprise.  The real tragedy is that the center, just as many had warned, destroyed itself by failing to unite around a single candidate and dividing the remaining 50% of the vote among three candidates.  This too, alas, should not be a surprise.

In fact, the elections also reveal the profound differences between the two metropolises and the rest of Egypt, a problem often commented upon but rarely fully appreciated during and since the revolution. Hamdeen Sabahi led strongly in Cairo and Alexandria. Morsi and the Brotherhood swept Upper Egypt, though Shafiq ran strong there as well. Shafiq carried the Delta strongly, except for Alexandria.

Ahram Online

Let's leave aside the question of whether there was any rigging. Some have raised the fact that a large number of new voters were registered since the Parliamentary vote last year and that this somehow favored Shafiq. Maybe it did, but increasing voter registration in itself is a standard tactic of candidates anywhere, unless they weren't actually eligible. Despite lots of rumors, the observers of the elections didn't detect huge systematic fraud. The five-way split looks like no Egyptian election in history, even in the pre-1952 period. The election was a success, but the polarized second round raises tensions all around. One side is for God and the other side is for Law and Order, and the voters are left with a choice which, based on the pie chart above, fully half of them rejected in round one: they are left voting for the lesser of what they already determined are two evils.

Many say, of course, that you can get it right four years from now. But many suspect the Muslim Brotherhood, and more probably suspect Shafiq the Mini-Mubarak, might not in fact yield power to new elections in four years, or five, or whatever (remember, the Constitution is still to be written). Morsi says he will govern with all elements of society and respect women's right to dress as they please, and might ("might")  even have a Copt for Vice President. But he, his FJP Party and the Brotherhood itself all promised they wouldn't run a candidate for President right up to the moment they did so, so some reason exists to doubt their promises. As for Shafiq, he has reportedly told businessmen he would use executions if needed to restore order within a month, which is hardly reassuring. Egyptians just had their first competitive Presidential election and now must choose between two men neither of whom seems to reassure them they will have another in just a few years.

There is much more to say. I'll be returning to the subject. Meanwhile, another commentary from the great middle ground who found themselves with a Hobson's choice: the banner says "The difference between Morsi and Shafiq is like the difference between a disaster and a black [worse] disaster."

Mubarak Trial Verdict: What Impact on the Presidential Vote?

The verdict in the trial of deposed Egyptian President Husni Mubarak is due tomorrow. Reports that "20,000 police and 160 tanks" will be deployed around the Police Academy where the trial has been held may suggest that the authorities suspect that the verdict (do they know it already?) may provoke public outrage. That may suggest they expect a relatively light verdict, if not an acquittal, though of course they may just be taking precautions whatever the verdict may be.

Although theoretically the court could impose the death penalty, they aren't going to do that on a dying 84-year-old, unless they immediately commute it on the spot. Some kind of serious-sounding sentence, even if it just means Mubarak ends his days under house (or hospital) arrest, seems more likely, though a really lenient finding (acquittal, a minor slap on the wrist of some sort) could provoke outrage.

Now that one of the two Presidential candidates, Ahmad Shafiq, is an old crony of Mubarak's, a fellow ex-Air Force chief and Mubarak's last Prime Minister (and the man who carried Mubarak's home province of Menufiyya overwhelmingly), it's clear that the verdict could have some impact on the Presidential runoff. But what impact, precisely? Would sympathy for Mubarak (if the sentence is harsh) strengthen Shafiq, or would a lenient sentence raise fears that Shafiq represents a return of Mubarakism (lots of people believe that already, including many of Shafiq's supporters who are old NDP types) and lead to a backlash against Shafiq? The exact affect depends on the verdict of course.

What seems certain is that, with Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi as the candidates, Mubarak's fate will become a campaign issue beginning tomorrow and probably continuing to the vote.  With the campaign already dividing between the religious candidate and the law and order security candidate (where's the fix-the-economy candidate, anyway?), the verdict will just polarize the debate even further.

Three Down . . .

If you're on Facebook of Twitter or probably just the Internet you've probably already seen this:

which of course immediately made me think of this:

  

On the iconic history of the red "X," see this earlier post on a Time Magazine tradition.

Too bad there's no symbol for "already blown up once, but still in power," for Salih.

The Mubarak Trial: Even Off TV, It's Still Divisive

Zeinobia live-blogged the resumption of the Mubarak trial yesterday. Though no longer being televised live, it still offers plenty of drama and pathos. I also still agree with Mahmoud Salem ("Sandmonkey") that it will last for years and, if Mubarak is still alive, he'll get house arrest. The sons will get prison time and then go enjoy their spoils in Europe or somewhere, and the second-string officials (if anyone) will pay the real penalty. Meanwhile, his lawyers will play up the sympathy:

Or here in the video:



You know, I really think there are better ways. When Nasser deposed his predecessor, Muhammad Naguib.  Naguib went into a long-term house arrest and became an Orwellian "unperson," but re-emerged as an old man after Sadat died and Mubarak took over. True, he died soon after, but now, belatedly, he has a subway station named for him. (Mubarak Station, a major hub, is now Martyr's Station.) Admittedly, revolutionary-and-maybe-becoming-democratic Egypt can't just unperson him as Nasser did Naguib.

Vengeance and retribution are deeply human, if not very admirable, motives. If Mubarak had killed or imprisoned a relative of mine (or me), I'd want to hang him too, but I also recognize the dangers of going after an ailing, aged octogenarian who is wheeled into the courtroom on a gurney. (I realize that may be courtroom theater, but it's effective with many who aren't quite sure about this revolution.) Back in the seventies when, after Watergate and Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, the move was extremely unpopular at the time and guaranteed Jimmy Carter's election in 1976; while I shared those opinions at the time, I think Ford could today be considered for an update of JFK's Profiles in Courage for committing what he must have known was political suicide in order to spare the country from a horrifically divisive trial of a former President.

The clashes outside the Mubarak trial yesterday remind us that nothing is secure yet, and a Thermidorian reaction might even come before and forestall a Jacobin Terror.  Tunisia was lucky in that Ben Ali left the country so they can try him in absentia all they want, with no effect; Libya is lucky in that Qadhafi announced he planned to burn the whole country to the ground and has few sympathizers who aren't themselves war criminals. The Egyptian case is trickier and more explosive. As I've noted before, I'm delighted he's being tried in regular civilian courts, and not in some revolutionary court, and charged only with crimes that are in the statutes, not something made up for the occasion. But yesterday's drama was disturbing.  It's no longer a show trial in the courtroom, but it's still divisive.

No Longer a Show Trial

I've already noted that it was a good sign that the Mubarak trial was being conducted, not by some drumhead revolutionary tribunal, but in the regular civilian court system. Now (to his credit in my opinion), Judge Ahmad Rifaat has banned further television coverage of the proceedings after what was apparently a rather chaotic session. He's also merged the trial with that of ex-Interior Minister Habib al-‘Adly and adjourned it till September 5.

So people got to see the old man in a cage, but now the show part of the trial is over, at least until sentencing.

Mahmoud Salem on Recent Egyptian Events

The frequently provocative and acerbic blogger who blogs as Rantings of a Sandmonkey, but who no longer has to blog anonymously,  has a lengthy, sort of portmanteau post up which he calls "Bits and Pieces," and which deals with a wide range of issues preoccupying Egypt in recent weeks, from the SCAF to the Islamist Friday to the Mubarak trial.to the future course of the revolution, to demonstrating during Ramadan. It's wide-ranging and worth reading, whether you share his particular views or not.

Read it all, but I think his take on the Mubarak trial is probably pretty close to the mark::

Did you watch the Mubarak trial? Didn’t you like how they added the Mubarak Case and the MOI case together for the first day, so you can see all the people you despise in one Holding Cell? Yeah, that wasn’t done to psychologically manipulate you at all.

Also, please watch it every day. It will only take 3 years, and if Mubarak isn’t dead by then, he will face house-arrest until he dies and will never see the inside of a jail cell. His sons, on the other hand, will get 3-5 years sentences topsand then leave the country to retire in Switzerland or something. Habib Aladly will be executed, of course.

Personally, after the first day, I am done with it. What will happen next will be a legal fiasco and a political circus. Not interested in either.

(Habib al-Adly is the former and much-hated Minister of the Interior.)

A Reflection on the Mubarak Trial in NYRB

Yasmine El Rashidi has a good piece on the Mubarak Trial and its Broader Meaning — "A Revolution Stalled? Scenes from Mubarak's Trial" — in The New York Review of Books. Useful perspectives.