Egypt's unrest
The enlightened world can't help but cheer the sight, so
exhilarating and so hopeful, of sustained protests on the streets
of Cairo and Alexandria. Another authoritarian regime is challenged
in the Mideast, a part of the world where prospects for organized
dissent for so long seemed so daunting. First Tunisia, followed by
Yemen and Jordan. Now Egypt.
In the absence of competitive elections and other essential
trappings of democracy, popular will prevails nonetheless. Hosni
Mubarak shows every sign of being in the final days of his three
decades of heavy-handed rule. Even the Egyptian military
acknowledges the legitimacy of escalating demonstrations calling
for his removal.
This, then, is when the West, so secure in the comfort that its
democracies do function, peacefully and generally free of
oppression, might pause to wonder what it might be like in Egypt
when the euphoria subsides and the reality of the post-Mubarak era
sets in.
The most reasonable of hopes - for a secular government that
reaches out to the rest of the Mideast and the world, rather than
trying to intimidate - won't be realized easily. U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued an appropriate warning to
Egypt, not to make the sort of cosmetic changes that bring about
democracy for "six months or a year," before "evolving into a
military dictatorship."
An early yet critical test of that will be the free, open and
legitimate elections that Egypt already has scheduled for
September. Egyptians need to end an era of oppression and
corruption, not create another one.
- The Times Union, Albany, N.Y.