So He Quit...

I can't help it.

It looks like Mecca.

But then more colourful.

Yesterday, the entire day was in the light of Mubarak's speech he was going to give in the evening, his own resignation. Everybody was looking forward to it, everybody was breathing victory that wasn't theirs yet..

Only I kept shrugging, not convinced. I was not going to believe it until I actually heard it, I'd decided. Last night, after remembering I hadn't eaten all day and had to cook for myself (there's my concentration alright..) I got a call from mum's friend, if I was on the edge of the couch waiting for Mubarak's speech like everyone else.

I wasn't.

I just heard an explanation of somebody who analyzed it all, comparing what has happened the past 19 days to a world-wide soap. Every day, something new would happen, every day the tension grew, and sometimes good news happened, sometimes it didn't.

Mubarak would keep prolonging, delaying, in the hope people would get bored and zap away.

The people demonstrating would do everything in their might to keep the whole world included, for their support, and every day would end with an actual cliffhanger. (Tomorrow, day of liberation. Tomorrow, day of anger. Tomorrow, day of freedom, Tomorrow, day of... )

Yesterday, after all they were hoping for, they had to deal with an immense disappointment of him not resigning. The crowd was like a hord of angry bees.

Today, Omar Sulaiman called in a conference to say Mubarak has stepped aside.

The first reaction was quiet disbelief (at least on my part). In the Tahrir Square, they are now celebrating as if Egypt was reborn.

Of course, this is just the beginning.

My second feeling, after the initial disbelief, was "Now what?"

Egypt's laws aren't equipped for democracy. Egypt's people have been told what to do by dictators for ever so long. Egypt's political elites doesn't have a very refreshing idea of what to do next, and the army, who is now "ruling"it, isn't going to do for the Egyptians.

There's an American politician involved in some way, too, and of course, the entire political world is getting involved over this. Only, the problem is, these Western countries are offering Western solutions, which won't fit in Egypt. The Arabic world would offer Arab solutions, which, really, aren't fit for Egypt either. It's a country that's somewhere in between, trying (and more often than not failing) to combine the best of both worlds. What Egypt really needs is a leader who understands all that, and can manage it in a way where most people (because everybody is impossible) are happy.

I'm thinking they'd also need to digitalize this.

How else are you going to count the votes of about 45 million people (assuming half? of Egypt's underage and can't vote yet) fairly?

So he quit..

It's the first step of many..

But at least it's a step, and Egypt's actually going somewhere.

Xx

The Gypsy