Protesters are taking to the streets in increasing numbers. But what are their prospects of success, asks Gihan Shahine "Security stands in the way of freedom." So chanted 200 or so demonstrators faced with a heavy security presence in front of the Journalists Syndicate on Sunday. Meanwhile, thousands of members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood took to the streets in the governorate of Menoufiya to protest against the previous week's detention of 2,000 of the group's supporters during Wednesday and Friday protests. Sunday's demonstrations were the latest in the unprecedented spate of mass protests sweeping the country. They began when the government signalled it would tolerate protests against US and Israeli policies. By the end of last year, though, demonstrators had turned their attention to domestic matters, and following President Hosni Mubarak's surprise call for multi-candidate presidential elections next autumn demonstrations in favour of political reform snow-balled. Spearheaded by secular activists and leftists, the Egyptian Movement for Change, known as Kifaya (Enough), organised a series of unlicensed street protests calling for an end to President Mubarak's 24-year old rule. In recent weeks kifaya has strengthened its rhetoric. With protests publicised in advance in the local press and on satellite channels, on 27 April they staged protests in 14 cities simultaneously with hundreds of demonstrators demanding that President Mubarak step down. Whatever its organisational strengths Kifaya has yet to develop into a grassroots movement, and draws most of its supporters from a small politicised elite. It is a far cry from the broad-based protest movements that brought democratic change to countries like Lebanon and the Ukraine. Many commentators argue, though, that it is the contagious character of street protests that is important. A street march, says Iranian-born social scientist Asef Bayat "not only brings together the invitees but also involves strangers who might espouse similar, real or imagined, grievances." "It is this epidemic potential," Bayat says, "and not simply the disruption or uncertainty caused by riots, that threatens the authorities who exert a pervasive power over public spaces -- with police patrols, traffic regulation, spatial division -- as a result." Few would deny that Kifaya has acted as a catalyst for other opposition protests which include workers, university professors, Copts and judges. Last, certainly not least, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which enjoys massive grassroots support nationwide, has joined the fray, adopting a confrontational attitude for the first time since the 1970s. This week the group's leader, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, vowed that the Brotherhood would continue to pressure for political reform despite the mass detention of members. The involvement of the Brotherhood may hold out the possibility of mobilising greater numbers in protests. Many commentators would agree, however, with Megan K Stacks argument in The Los Angeles Times that recent protests in the Alexandria Judges' Club, where 1,200 magistrates threatened to refuse to certify autumn elections in the absence of stronger guarantees for judicial independence, are perhaps more significant. "An uprising in one of the cornerstones of the Egyptian regime represents a prospect more chilling than any street demonstration," Stack wrote. "The judges' demand is a symptom of a new, unpredictable energy that has seized Egyptian politics after decades of stagnation -- and of the popular discontent snowballing in the region." Recent street protests, says Bayat, show the Arab street is "neither a brute force nor dead". They would, argues Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed, professor of political science at Cairo University, have been larger had people not been intimidated by Egypt's 24-year state of emergency laws which allow for the mass detention of protesters. What Egypt is seeing, says Nabil Abdel- Fattah of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, is the erosion of three decades of stagnation and public submission to rulers during which "the ruling elite failed to provide people with any political and economic stability". Official tolerance of protests condemning the US war on Iraq, he argues, emboldened the public to be more vocal in expressing their own grievances. While Kifaya and Brotherhood activists are keen to rebut claims that US pressure on Egypt to reform has strengthened reform movements, pointing to Washington's support of undemocratic regimes in the region, few independent analysts would deny there has been an impact. And, says Abdel-Fattah, other external factors, including mass protests in Lebanon, have acted to stir the Egyptian street. Not everyone on the street, though. Ahmed Hosni, a 38-year-old tour operator, would not contemplate taking part in one of the downtown street protests he daily passes on his way to work. Such protests might have fomented democratic changes in other countries but, says Hosni, will not work in Egypt which "is an undemocratic country where public demands are usually ignored". Many who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly share Hosni's pessimism. Marwa El-Sayed, a 20-year-old media student at Cairo University, believes most students are only ready to protest against the US and Israel, but not against the government, which is both "risky and ineffective". "Students are generally not politicised: they don't really know who to support or oppose," says Marwa. "Protests vent the students' anger at developments in Palestine and Iraq and then everybody gets back to normal life." It is a dynamic, says El-Sayed, of which the government is well aware. "The state has discovered that such protests are useful in a sense, they relieve public frustration without threatening political stability." Allowing a small opening for public dissent was, perhaps, the government's best option. That compromise may explain why the government has dealt mildly with Kifaya, dispersing crowds and detaining protesters for no more than a few hours, while clamping down heavily on the Brotherhood and rounding up members even before they stage protests. Small demonstrations of civil society groups like Kifaya, believes El-Sayed, are viewed as a minor irritant the regime is prepared to tolerate since they do not threaten its stability. The Brotherhood, however, could bring tens of thousands of people onto the streets "thus constituting a radical challenge to the government". "The Brotherhood," says El-Sayed, "has no legal status and would make demands, including licensing the group as a political party or association, that cannot easily be accepted by the government." For its part the government has begun organising counter rallies under the banner of "not enough", at which supporters call for a fifth term extension to President Mubarak's rule. Such events, say Abdel-Fattah, are "failed attempts on the part of the notoriously corrupt ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) to legitimise the regime." "The NDP does not represent the public and the 'not enough' banner is ridiculous -- it shows the movement as a reaction rather than an action in itself." El-Sayed is pessimistic over the future of street politics in Egypt, at least in the short term. Though he expects protests to continue over the summer "the government has no intention of meeting the demands of reform movements, and will adopt harsher methods in dealing with protesters."
