Friday, April 19, 2013

From Behind Bars Mubarak Smiles



On April, 13, the former dictator of Egypt was wheeled into court.  The occasion was his retrial on charges related to the killing of protesters in January and February 2011, prior to his forced abdication on February 11 of that fateful year.  So why was he smiling from behind those iron bars?

His two sons, Alaa and Gamal were next to him as co-defendants.  Some of his supporters showed up and cheered him.  Nattily dressed, Mubarak sat up in his hospital bed, no more the laid-up sickly person with his finger in his nose as on prior occasions.  In recognition of those cheers, he raised up his hand in a gesture of confident greetings for his supporters.  The families of the victims of early 2011 were outnumbered and looked sullen.

Outside that Cairo court, more Mubarak supporters showed up in buses, private cars and on foot.  Shouting slogans of acclamation, their signs in Arabic read “THE PEOPLE WANT TO HONOR THE PRESIDENT.”  That was a slogan debunking the anti-Mubarak slogan of 2 years ago which reverberated through Tahrir and throughout Egypt and the rest of the Arab Spring countries:  “THE PEOPLE WANT TO COLLAPSE THE REGIME.”

Back to the court, another big surprise: As Mubarak smiled, (or was it a smirk?), the presiding judge, Mustafa Hassan Abdulla, unexpectedly ended the session as quickly as it began.  Recusing himself, he cited conflict of interest, whatever that meant in this context.  Those events scarring the progress of the Egyptian Revolution, the mother of all Arab Spring revolutions, may be pointing to the emergence of a new theory of revolutionary relativity.  It may be briefly expounded in one basic question: “Between the Stability under the Mubarak dictatorship and the chaos under the Morsi democracy, what should the average Egyptian choose?”

This is a huge question which can only be answered on the ground in Egypt by Egyptians who are the only party that could define their own expectations.  For now, there is no clear definition for those expectations except through hurling insults by the secularists at President Morsi, and by the Islamists calling the secularists all kinds of names.  That verbal war, though not an answer to the lack of security or to the economic near-collapse, might be a catharsis for the 60-years of imposed silence on the Egyptian masses by the former security State.

Other questions are now thrown into the mix and are generated by the Mubarak smiles from behind bars.  That smile and that wave by the hand in greeting his supporters in that Cairo court room conveyed what the Germans call SCHDENFREUDE - malicious enjoyment of others' misfortunes.  The others are, of course, all those whose revolt brought down the throne of that latter-day pharaoh.  Mubarak, for the duration of his 30 years of rule (1981-2011) has told the world: "Either I or chaos!!"  For the moment, with chaos rampant in Egypt, his demeanor in court conveyed an unmistaken message: "I told you so!!"

Mubarak supporters are now repeating the same mantra.  I asked an Egyptian businessman in New  York City about his feelings regarding post-Mubarak Egypt.  His swift response was "I yearn for even one day of Mubarak's rule.  He made the streets safe and business vibrant."

The Egyptian judiciary, at least its Islamist segment, felt differently.  The Attorney General (AG), Talaat Abdullah, has now ordered Mubarak's removal from the comfort of the Armed Forces Hospital overlooking the great Nile in Maadi, south of Cairo, to a hospital bed at the Tora prison where Mubarak's two sons are held.  The AG's office announced that the return of Mubarak to the prison's hospital was recommended by a  medical team which, after examining the deposed President, concluded that his robust health merited such transfer.

Simultaneously, the President of the Appeals Court (a lower court as compared to Egypt's highest court - the Court of Cassassion), Counsellor Samir Abu-Elmaaty, fixed a new date for the retrial of Mubarak and his sons - May 11.  The venue of that trial is the Criminal Court of Cairo North (the 2nd Chamber).  The charges have remained the same: Complicity in the death of nearly 900 demonstrators in early 2011, and corruption represented by the conversion of public wealth into private wealth.

Those who smile (or laugh) last, smile (or laugh) longer.  Yet the smiles of the anti-Mubarak forces in Egypt - a country united by the pharaohs and the Nile, and split by the January 25 revolution by the Islamists versus the secularists including the Copts - are also an expression of SCHADENFREUDE!!

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