Be Careful What You Wish For

Moises Saman for The New York Times - Demonstrators in and around Tahrir Square clashed with the police for a second day on Sunday.

Once again to the ramparts! In Cairo and Alexandria Egyptian police are responding to the continued provocations of the protesters whose exasperated patience has run out. The upheaval that they helped construct in their country which resulted in the cosmetic removal of President Hosni Mubarak, but left in place his Army chief, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi who is now the chief military ruler, has been for naught.

The long and glorious tradition of Army rule will not readily submit to the demands of the protests. Out front and centre the original protesters, those who encouraged one another to believe that ordinary Egyptians, religious, secular, students, working poor, unemployed, could and must raise their voice in a collective outrage of revolutionary zeal. No longer would they live under a quasi-'democracy' that was totalitarian rule.

Their success in removing Hosni Mubarak from power really represented nothing more than a betrayal of the military chiefs whom he had advanced and relied upon, of their commander-in-chief. The trust he placed in Hussein Tantawi was repaid by his forcible removal and the lost-face of his trial, a broken man; actually an Egyptian patriotic autocrat. As for the substance of change, there was none.

Except for continued unemployment. Except for a continuation of rising food and energy prices. And increased insecurity as crime has risen rapidly and continues to do so. And the country in throes of economic distress, its tourism broken, foreign investment truncated, manufacturing listless and the political situation stagnant.

In Tahrir Square the centre of the protests then and now again, police are squared off against the protesters. "We will never be scared again. They can shoot at us all they want", claimed one of the protesters. And shoot at them they did. Rubber bullets, but they are projectiles at high speed and they do their damage, blinding and even killing. Including journalists and photographers, hit in the face, in the forehead.

Medics set up to serve the people on Tahrir Square claim to have treated people for eye injuries from rubber bullets; some of them losing an eye. "We didn't have a revolution so the people we removed could come back to parliament. We need a transfer of power to civilians. Everything that is happening shows the military wants to stay in power."

Well, of course they do. And they are facing off actually, not against the protesters in principle, but the growing assurance of the Muslim Brotherhood, as the election process draws nigh and will be drawn up over a period of months. They can count on it, the Muslim Brotherhood, that they will finally assume their 'rightful' place in the corridors of power in Cairo.