Click on the headline to link to an Associated Press online article detailing the latest happenings in Egypt (as of February 18, 2011).
Markin comment:
The fast moving events in Egypt (and across the Middle East) cry out, cry out desperately, for the formation of a revolutionary workers party basing itself on democratic and socialist demands (the Transitional Program demands outlined by Leon Trotsky in the late 1930s, yes 1930s, as applicable to belated developed countries-the key immediate demand being the fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly) to gather around it workers, peasants and other allies to fight to the finish for a workers and peasants government. Can anything less be on the order of the day? I think not. Such situations, as the 30 plus years survival of the Mubarak regime testify to, show how rare such opportunities are and one better take maximum advantage, if not for the immediate struggle for power, then for the ability to fight later with the masses readily behind you.
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Hundreds of workers went on strike on Thursday along the Suez Canal, one of the world’s strategic waterways, joining others across Egypt pressing demands for better wages and conditions. The protests have sent the economy reeling and defied the military’s attempt to restore a veneer of the ordinary after President Hosni Mubarak’s fall last week.
Associated Press
Workers went on strike at an oil and soap factory in Mansoura, Egypt, on Thursday, part of a growing wave of labor unrest.
A vendor’s poster bore a picture of the defense chief, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Thursday.
The labor unrest this week at textile mills, pharmaceutical plants, chemical industries, the Cairo airport, the transportation sector and banks has emerged as one of the most powerful dynamics in a country navigating the military-led transition that followed an 18-day popular uprising and the end of Mr. Mubarak’s three decades of rule.
Banks reopened last week, but amid a wave of protests over salaries and management abuses promptly shut again this week. The opening of schools was delayed another week, and a date has yet to be set for opening the stock market, which some fear may plummet over the economic reverberations and anxiety about the political transition.
The military has repeatedly urged workers to end their strikes, to no avail.
“For 30 years, there were no protests at all — well, not really — and now that’s all there is,” said Ibrahim Aziz, a merchant in downtown Cairo. “The situation’s a mess.”
For days now, the military leadership has sought to steer a country in the throes of a political transition that could remake Egypt more dramatically than at any time since the monarchy was overthrown in 1952. In a series of statements, it outlined steps to amend the Constitution and return Egypt to civilian leadership within six months, though the exact date for elections for the presidency and Parliament was left ambiguous.
So far the military seems to enjoy broad popular support, not least for forcing the departure of Mr. Mubarak to his residence in the Sinai town of Sharm el Sheik, though some have complained of decision-making that remains utterly opaque to the public. Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel laureate and critic of Mr. Mubarak, complained this week about that lack of transparency and the speed of the transition the military has outlined.
Other critics have questioned why the military has refused to free thousands of political prisoners and lift the Emergency Law, which gave the Mubarak government wide powers in arresting and imprisoning people it deemed opponents. Thursday was the second day without the military’s issuing any communiqués on its intentions in the weeks ahead, and questions about forming political parties and civil rights are left unanswered.
“There has not been very much coming out about what I call the infrastructure — even the temporary infrastructure — for democracy,” a Western diplomat in Cairo said Thursday. “That seems to me an area where further clarification would be important.”
The diplomat said Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi had emerged as the clear leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to which Mr. Mubarak delegated power when he resigned last Friday. “Tantawi seems to be the acting president of Egypt,” the diplomat said. Though the council has maintained contacts with the United States through the Defense Department and the National Security Council, it has proved disciplined in keeping its deliberations from diplomats and opposition leaders.
“What one would have liked to see is more transparency in this whole Supreme Council deliberation process,” the diplomat said under customary rules of anonymity.
Egypt’s revolution was, in some ways, remarkable for the consensus over its demands, primarily the end to Mr. Mubarak’s authoritarian rule, with disparate ideologies subsumed in the narrative of a popular uprising. But already this week some of the fundamental rules that have underlined republican Egypt have begun to be renegotiated.
The head of Al-Azhar, once one of the world’s foremost institutions of religious scholarship, has called for its leadership to be elected, not appointed by the government, a change that could reverse decades of the institution’s abject subordination to the state. The strikes may prove no less decisive as they gather momentum in turning back years of privatization that left workers with fewer protections and more grievances.
In a statement Thursday, striking workers in Mahalla el-Kobra, the center of the country’s textile industry and a stronghold of labor resistance in the Nile Delta, said that they would no longer take part in a government-controlled labor union but that they would rather join the new Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, which it said was set up on Jan. 30.
The striking workers at the Suez Canal Authority said their protests in the three major canal cities — Suez, Port Said and Ismailiya — would not interfere with the operations of the canal, which links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. One of the world’s busiest waterways, the canal serves as one of Egypt’s primary sources of revenue and a major transit route for global shipping and oil.
Other strikes were reported at textile plants in the coastal city of Damietta and a pharmaceutical factory in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city. Taken together they are thought to number in the tens of thousands of workers in one of Egypt’s most pronounced episodes of labor unrest. The problems point to a growing challenge for the military and the caretaker government: How to satisfy demands as the economy staggers.
“Everyone is looking for money, and there is none to be had,” said Hani Shukrallah, a political analyst and editor.
The economic woes have done little to dim the surge of optimism voiced in both Cairo and the countryside. Just days after the tumult in Tahrir Square, among the few telltale signs of the protests are vendors hawking Egyptian flags, and a memorial to protesters killed on Jan. 25 and the demonstrations that followed. On the lawyers’ syndicate building a banner called for Thursday to be a “Day of Purification.” Young protest leaders posted a plea on the walls of buildings in a nearby square to persist in their revolutionary fervor.
“From this day, your country is yours,” one read. “Don’t throw trash, don’t disobey traffic signals, don’t pay bribes, don’t forge papers and complain about anyone who neglects their job. This is your chance to build your country with your hand.”
It was signed “Youth of the Jan. 25 Revolution.”
“The problem with the old system was that it separated us,” said Sherif Abdel-Aziz, 34, a businessman. “Nothing brought us together. Everyone lived to eat and survive, and you didn’t even care about your brother. Now people want to do something.”
Kareem Fahim contributed reporting.
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