Continuing protests to keep Egypt's military rulers in check

The people of Egypt have built an expectation that there will be a government accountable to them, unlike the Mubarak government that was accountable to the United States as part of the US/Zionist colonial structure that now includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait and others.

“We are not worried over the possibility of losing public support; when we staged a sit-in in protest against the appointment of Ahmed Shafik as prime minister we were less than a thousand. But eventually we achieved what we were after and were praised by everyone.

“Now there are thousands in the current sit-in, which means we are on the right track.”

At around 6pm, around three thousand protesters marched from the square towards the Cabinet office to demonstrate their displeasure with the interim government's handling of the revolution's demands.

Also importantly, I have not read of a single Egyptian who offers a philosophical or ideological justification for Egypt's government not being accountable to its people or for groups that could get popular support being marginalized out of politics.

This is in contrast to a generation ago when, odd as it may seem today, there was a seriously held belief in many places in the Middle East that given the opportunity the people would vote for Islam-oriented parties that would leave their countries vulnerable.

The intervening decades may have made the opposite case. Iran, with an Islam-oriented government has been able to both hold elections and fend of Western pressure while the region's non-democracies have further devolved into humiliations of and disgraces to their people and their religion.

Today, nobody in the Middle East seriously buys the Nasser/Attaturk/Pavlavi idea from the mid 1900s that a country should, for strategic reasons, prevent religious parties or organizations from attaining political power.

Because not a single person is calling for it, it seems very unlikely that Egypt will fail in the relatively near future to put its government under civilian electoral accountability. I have some worry that the US may pressure the military council to delay this process with the hope of making the delay indefinite and then effectively permanent, but the people of Egypt, including the people on Egypt's ruling military council do not seem to be moving in that direction.

If the ruling military council was to bow to US requests to constrain the role of what it calls Islamist parties, the protesters would not accept that and would force them out as they forced out Mubarak.

I hope it is this year as has been promised, but I am very confident that before this time next year there will be an elected government in place in Egypt that has strong mechanisms in place that require it to adopt to the will of the people ruled rather than foreigners. Egypt will leave the US/Zionist colonial structure.