Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • 18 days
yyat, who famously represented Ayman al-Zawahiri before the latter became
al Qaeda’s No. 2 man.
Several hundred yards away, at the southern end of the square, a group of
politicians congregated near the megaphone that serves as the most visible
sign of the emerging attempts to channel the crowd’s energy into a political
program. Wael Nawara, the secretary-general of the liberal (and illegal)
Ghad Party, told me that Egyptians “know how to take care of ourselves”
after years of building a parallel state “in every field—education, health care,
everything.”
“We can get organization within hours of chaos,” he said.
Behind him, a giant yellow banner outlined the protesters’ demands: the
resignation of the president, free and fair elections, a new constitution. What
about Vice President Omar Suleiman, who claims to be offering dialogue
“These people,” Nawara said, “have stepped on the law and the Constitution.
They have pissed on it in fact.”
Suleiman’s strategy seems to be to hold talks with the legal opposition—a
motley collection of hapless political parties that have virtually no representation
or respect among the protesters in Tahrir Square. “It’s more like a
monologue than a dialogue,” Nawara said.
“It’s irrelevant to the main event,” said Hisham Kassem, the dapper former
publisher of independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. “You have the regime
trying to put out the message that they are open to dialogue.… It can’t
happen. Nobody can assume leadership, and there is nobody to negotiate
with. There is only one way to defuse this: for Mubarak to leave.”
“If they try to play tricks on us, we’ll come back here,” Nawara said. “If
they want real dialogue, they know where to find us.”
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