CAIRO - A few days after most of the revolutionaries went home, Egypt has been hit by countless sporadic demonstrations, not calling this time for an end to political corruption, but for better salaries and working conditions. The protests by professionals have taken the Egyptian capital and other cities by storm, with thousands of employees from ministries, banks and companies standing outside their institutions, blocking traffic in the streets and even invading the offices of their bosses to make their demands heard. Now, many of the nation's intellectuals and political thinkers are worried that these protests, which come hard upon the heels of the revolution of the Egyptian people against Hosni Mubarak, who ruled here for 30 years, will hinder Egypt's march towards democracy. “The protests might spoil the wonderful work of the revolutionaries,” says Ahmed Okasha, a leading Egyptian psychologist. “These protesters should give their compatriots the chance to focus on nation-building now.” The Army, which took over as Mubarak stepped down on February 11, has described the protests by professionals demanding financial rights as “dangerous”. There is an almost concurrence on this in the intellectual circles of this country. Despite this, the professionals' protests continue unabated. In Cairo, Ministry of Telecommunications employees have been threatening to leave their offices and block communications if their administration does not increase their salaries. The employees of several banks have also staged protests, compelling officials at the Central Bank of Egypt to shut down these banks for days. Meanwhile, in the Suez Canal City of Port Said and the Upper Egyptian City of Beni Suef, demonstrators smashed up and torched governmental offices, demanding residential flats and other services. Port Said, where slum dwellers invaded the offices of the Governor and set his car in fire, has been the most violent focus for protests across the nation in the past few days. “These people have been unable to express themselves for the past 30 years,” said Saad Aboud, a former legislator and a political activist. “This means that they have the right to express themselves freely, but they still need to consider the interests of their own country,” he told The Gazette in an interview. Now, Aboud and like-minded Egyptians are afraid that the protests may make the military establishment angry, leading to confrontations between the Army and the protesters. So far, Army personnel who are deployed in the streets and the squares of the nation have been treating citizens very gently, in an atmosphere of co-operation and love. Pedestrians pass tanks in the streets often stop and ask the soldiers and their officers to pose for photographs with them. The overriding fear now is for this relationship to alter. Some people have already started to see signs of this alteration. The Army has forced some of the demonstrators who continued to linger in Al Tahrir Square in central Cairo to go home. Other people say the Army seems to be on the verge of getting fed up with some citizens who insist on causing trouble. “I hope we can preserve this good relationship with the Army. We will all lose out if this relationship becomes confrontational,” Aboud warned.
