ON THE STREETS:"No, No, No Mubarak," they chanted as the president swore in his new cabinet members
AS EGYPT’S president, Hosni Mubarak, yesterday swore in three members of his new cabinet, thousands of demonstrators poured into Tahrir Square in the centre of the capital. Television pictures showed Mubarak, in dark suit and tie, standing on a Persian carpet in a palatial high-ceilinged room before three ageing men also in suits and ties. All was calm, all was quiet.
The picture from Tahrir (Liberation) Square could not have more different. During Sunday night the army had ringed the square, the site of daily mass protests for a week, with battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers and scout cars and cut off access with coils of razor wire. All foot traffic into the square was through narrow choke points manned by smiling, polite young soldiers, glancing at identity papers but not recording names or numbers.
The atmosphere was festive. Nelly, an elderly, well-dressed lady standing ahead of me in the queue, was carrying a folding stool upholstered in blue material with yellow flowers. She and her friend, Rawia, had come every day since the protest began.
“I stay until I get tired,” she said, opening her stool and sitting down. “We are waiting for friends to join us.”
A tall man in a soiled grey caftan brandished a handwritten sign in Arabic that read: “No Mubarak, no violence, no looting.”
He was angry about the rigging of last November’s parliamentary election, which gave the president’s party 90 per cent of the seats in the popular assembly, he said. Asked for his name, he said: “Abdullah Fawzi Saad. I’m from Mubarak’s village. I came here yesterday and slept the night in the square. You see how dirty my galabiya became,” he brushed the material in disgust.
Groups of men bowed in the direction of Mecca to perform the noonday prayer while most circulated, some chatting with friends, others chanting the most popular slogans. “No, no, no Mubarak” and “Freedom, freedom!”
Several men wheeled in bicycles with plastic bags of free food for the demonstrators hanging from their handlebars. Families sitting on blankets sipping tea and eating sandwiches transformed the protest into a picnic. A group of 50 or 60 women in headscarves marched into the square from the direction of the rose-domed Egyptian Museum. They carried placards demanding democracy and adherence to the constitution.
“Mubarak go, Mubarak go,” they cried in unison. A short cheerful woman with glowing cheeks said they were not part of any party or organisation but I suspected they might be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition party.
The woman said they want Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei to become interim leader – “Not president” – until fresh elections could be held for parliament and president. A woman at the front of the group called out: “We demand our money from Swiss bank accounts.” The others echoed her call.
Near the museum there was a smashed pick-up filled with rubbish and propped up on a bag a drawing portrayed Mubarak as a devil. “He will join the garbage of history,” a man standing next to the display told every passerby. A protester collecting rubbish from the street, tossed a filled sack into the pile on the pick-up, dislodging the drawing. But this was quickly righted by its self-appointed protector.
Invisible to the happy throng in the square, several yellow and white lorries sporting water cannon on their roofs took up position in the empty parking lot behind the museum near the still smouldering headquarters of the ruling party.
Kites in the colours of the Egyptian flag soared and dipped over Qasr al-Nil bridge spanning the sluggish brown Nile.