by Dr Dennis Walker, PSI, Monash University
The situation in Egypt is dangerous because the secular-educated are evenly split between (a) Islamists and (b) Secular Nasserites, Marxists and Liberals. Each side wants to eliminate the other from politics. In the past year we have had hundreds of thousands of (a) Ikhwan and (b) Nasserites + Leftists on the streets. Huge demonstrations. If the two categories of demonstrators ever ran into each other, then torrents of blood could flow.
The military is playing on this fear to win back the power they had under Mubarak. They want a new system that will still revolve around them = state monies. I found ordinary people crammed into buses in Cairo had fond but hazy memories of "Gamal" --- "there was justice between people in that time". They didn't like the class-caste system under Mubarak. So Seesy is presenting himself as "the new Nasser". He won't be. Nasser's generation of officers came of poor petty-bourgeois origins, had been ill-paid, and knew something of what ordinary people suffered> built welfare state and wider education. Seesy and his fellow officers have never suffered. He might prove the new Mubarak, though. The Army wants money.
Egypt is to some extent a broken country now. I have a book on pre-1952 Egypt to complete there, but at t my age it might not be good to go back. I had grown to like it in recent visits.
It looks that most Arab countries are failed states which I deeply regret. Learning Arabic didn't pay off for in some aspects at least..
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