By Adam Morrow
CAIRO, Apr 7 2009 (IPS)

Egyptians expressed their discontent Monday with rising prices and political stagnation in a national ‘day of anger’ organised by online activists. Although smaller in scope than a nationwide strike on this date last year, opposition figures say the demonstrations across the country made their point.

“The ‘day of anger’ certainly represented a success for the people, even if the results were less tangible than last year’s strike,” Hamdi Hassan, MP for the Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement told IPS.

The event was initially organised by an Internet-based activist group, ‘The April 6 Youth’, using Facebook to spread word of the action. With the motto “It’s our right, and we’ll take it”, the group – which is not affiliated with any particular political movement – boasts more than 75,000 online members.

In a statement early last month, group leaders called on Egyptians to peacefully voice dissatisfaction with the political and economic policies of President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling regime. Participants were urged to register their displeasure Apr. 6 by hanging Egyptian flags from windows, donning black clothing and refraining from making purchases.

Most importantly, the April 6 Youth called for demonstrations to be staged at locations countrywide, including professional syndicates and universities.

The group also issued a list of basic demands, some economic and some political. These included raising the official minimum wage to reflect rising prices; drafting a new national constitution guaranteeing political freedoms and a two-term limit to the presidency; and a halt to Egyptian natural gas exports to Israel.

In an Apr. 2 statement, the Brotherhood called on Egyptians to “express their discontent with the policies of a regime which has squandered the country’s riches, neglected its national security and neutralised its leading role in the region.” The group went on to direct citizens to participate “using only peaceful means and by abiding by constitutional and legal restrictions.”

The idea for the event was inspired by a similar action on Apr. 6 of last year, when a planned labour strike at a public sector textiles company turned into a nationwide protest against skyrocketing food prices and political stasis. That action – led by labour leaders, opposition figures and political activists – urged citizens to stay home from work in addition to staging demonstrations across the country.

Last year’s strike saw a number of violent incidents in which security forces clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators. By the end of the day, three people lay dead and more that 100 injured, while hundreds more were arrested on charges of “disturbing the peace.”

This year’s day of anger – which called only for popular demonstrations and not for labour strikes – was considerably less dramatic. “April 6 action turns into a number of small demonstrations in many locations,” independent daily Al-Dustour reported Tuesday (Apr. 7).

At the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate’s Cairo headquarters, a common venue for political protest, several hundred activists chanted anti-government slogans. Meanwhile, some 500 people demonstrated outside a Cairo administrative court to protest government natural gas sales to Israel.

Major demonstrations were also staged on university campuses throughout Egypt, involving hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of students. The largest of these was at Kafr Al-Sheikh University in the Nile Delta, in which more than 3,000 students reportedly took part.

“University protests saw the highest turnout because they included large numbers of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated students,” Ibrahim Mansour, executive editor of Al-Dustour newspaper told IPS. “As the country’s biggest opposition movement, the Brotherhood has the greatest ability to mobilise people.”

All of the demonstrations were met with an overwhelming security presence – a common feature of popular protests in Egypt. Police, directed to arrest anyone seen protesting, also detained dozens of people in the days leading up to the event.

“Whenever there’s a demonstration, especially in the capital, the area ends up looking like a combat zone,” noted Hassan. “Vast numbers of security forces, maybe ten times the number of protestors, were deployed – but this is to be expected.”

“Security forces, along with plainclothes enforcers, flooded all areas of protest,” said Mansour.

Parliament, too, became a venue for dissent Apr. 6, when some 100 Muslim Brotherhood and independent MPs – more than one-fifth of the assembly – abruptly walked out of the chamber. “It was the first time for opposition parliamentarians to leave the assembly in mid-session in the presence of the prime minister,” said Hassan, who participated in the walkout.

The following day, the state press, citing the good sense of the average citizen, boasted that the event had been a failure.

“Egypt does not know chaos,” read the Apr. 7 headline of official daily Al- Gomhouriya. The call to action failed, the paper reported, “because the people are aware of the importance of maintaining efficient work and production.”

Mansour conceded that the event had not been a success on the scale of last year’s strike, due mainly to the intimidating security presence. “But it did constitute more evidence of rising popular anger in Egypt; evidence that the demand for social justice and freedom of expression is still alive,” he said.

Hassan was more upbeat, saying the affair represented an important turning point on the road to political change.

“Ultimately, the government failed to thwart the event, which saw tremendous popular participation,” he said. “And next year’s day of anger will be even bigger, since the date has become a watershed in Egypt’s history; a day that belongs not to any particular political faction, but to all Egyptians.”

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