The extraordinary scenes in Cairo today should not blind us to the fact that Hosni Mubarak’s apparent departure is not the beginning of the end but merely the end of the beginning. The army may have assured the protestors – whose gallantry, courage and peaceful presence on the streets of Egypt’s cities has been as startling as it has been wondrous – that their demands will be met but those demands cannot be satisfied just by Hosni Mubarak’s departure. It’s not just personal, you might say, it’s business too. And that business is real and verifiable reform.
Like Brother Korski I remain optimistic that momentum now lies with the reform movement. Omar Suleiman is no kind of acceptable replacement. Nor, in anything other than the short-term, is the army. A military guarantee of stability while new arrangements and the timing of free and multi-party elections are worked out is one thing (and possibly a necessary thing too); continued martial rule quite another.
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