Egypt's Social-Political Plight

Egyptians have been simmering with agonized resentment for many long years. It's what oppressed people without rights do, after all. There are far too many young people who are unemployed. There are too many people living in extreme poverty. There are the young who receive higher education and they begin to look more closely around them to find fault with the country's social, political and religious establishment.

And like all countries worldwide now, technology has offered them relatively inexpensive instruments of instant communication. That instant communication has been temporarily cut off. Egypt has learned its lesson from observing what has occurred in Tunisia where through social networking sites people invested in challenging the government have been able to make their dissatisfaction heard.

Tunis is in the agonizing political state of social upheaval, with what's left of the original government absorbing the anger of the people, desperately trying to placate them, offering solutions that go part way toward indicating that the voice of the people has been heard. Jordan's King Abdullah is blaming his country's legislators, demanding that they begin to do a better job of representing the country's and the population's interests.

Yemen, already struggling to contain a revolt in its south, and attempting to accommodate the urging of the United States to isolate and neutralize the growing threat of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, now is faced with revolutionary protests. Algeria, the first in the area to counter large-scale protests over rising food prices and high inflation, may yet see them resumed.

But it is in Egypt that an aging former General who has the trust of the Egyptian armed forces, has been faced with huge protests in its largest cities, with tens of thousands of irate Egyptians turning out in Cairo, Suez, Alexandria and others of its cities, with the armed forces brutally attempting to suppress them. Internet access and cellphone connections have been cut off.

President Mubarak has finally addressed the nation.

He has taken the amazing step of dismissing his government, informing the nation that a new cabinet would be announced the following day, Saturday. Emergency measures to counter a state of emergency; 26 protesters have died, and hundreds have been injured. The headquarters of the governing NDP party has been set afire, and the state television and foreign ministry buildings have been surrounded.

President Mubarak is a seasoned politician and a survivor. An autocrat ruling as a semi-benevolent dictator insufficiently responsive to the needs of the 40% of Egyptians who live in poverty, and to the large number of unemployed youth, he has had the courage to maintain a cool, but utilitarian peace agreement with the State of Israel.

He has been a staunch ally of the West in battling extremism, facing his own country's incendiary problems with the Islamist fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

Political, social and economic reform will inevitably have to be addressed. In a changing world where political Islam is becoming ever more forcefully assertive, threatening the conventional regimes that have ruled in the Middle East, where the populations remain under-served and restive, those who promise them a better life will be heeded - even if they are the Islamists.

For the sake of stability in the region, and for the sake of offering hope to people living without it, struggling to exist in a hostile social and political environment, those who govern without due concern for the well-being of the governed have been placed on notice.

When Mr. Mubarak stated that he understood the protesters' grievances but that a thin line divided liberty from chaos and he would not allow Egypt to be destabilised, he was being forcefully reactive as a responsible governor. He now needs to be forcefully pro-active in considering what more needs to be done to enact changes in his country to benefit both it and its people.

No easy task, but critically overdue.