Only pressure from below can bring Egypt democracy | Seumas Milne

The decapitation of the regime was just the start. The revolution will have to go further if it’s going to deliver what people want Anyone who imagined that the Egyptian revolution would be settled with the ousting of Hosni Mubarak has already been sorely disabused. The dictator may have been bundled out of the presidential palace and demonstrators temporarily cleared from Tahrir Square. But the social and political upheaval shows every sign of spreading. It’s not just that the protests are now fanning out across north Africa and the Middle East : to Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Iran, Libya and now Bahrain – home of the US navy’s fifth fleet. In Egypt itself, as in Tunisia, where the uprisings began, pressure for more far-reaching change is if anything growing, as setpiece street demonstrations have morphed into a wave of strikes. Industrial action played a central role in the final push to drive Mubarak from power last week – just as it did in sparking resistance to the regime a couple of years ago in the textile production centre of Mahalla . But now walkouts and occupations have mushroomed across Egypt, in defiance of the army high command’s edict to return to work: on the buses and trains, in the steel and flour mills, among oil and gas workers, post office and bank employees. Even the police who were dispatched to use lethal force against the people to save Mubarak’s skin are now demanding decent pay and conditions – as their counterparts are in Tunisia. And although the impact of neoliberal reforms and economic crisis in Europe

Posted by on February 17, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry