Egypt Protests: Where did Mubarak go wrong?

What did Mubarak do to lose his 29-year-old regime? Answer: he blinked first. Firing his cabinet on 28 January became the precipitating factor in his power’s demise.

Imagine if you are a dictator of a large Middle Eastern country. You have been ruling the place for about three decades and as it turns out, you are pretty good at it. You kept too much political dissidence at bay; survived six assassinations attempts; made a lot of money; kept the army happy; made friends with almost everyone in the world, including US, Israel, Libya and Saudi Arabia; made your son a viable candidate for succession. And then, all of a sudden, it’s all on the verge of disappearing because some Tunisian fruit vendor, who no one had ever heard of, decided to burn himself. At this point in your life, you have to wonder what went wrong.

As the Egypt Protests continue for the ninth day, without any sign of waning, a hot-button topic of discussion has become, why did it all happen. Popular theories include extensive corruption, too much oppression, lack of a coherent vision, nepotism and half-hearted reforms. But, all of the above are fundamental hall marks of dictatorships. Corruption, nepotism and oppression are what make dictatorship possible. And yet you don’t see all 1.9 billion people currently living under dictatorships around the world, up in arms all the time.

What went wrong with Mubarak, the key catalyst that turned decades of anger and misery into a coup, was the fact that he blinked. He showed the chink in his armor that turned a protest of a few thousands into a nation-wide revolution.

For the first three days of the protests (25-28 January) there were less than a few thousand people protesting. And the protests were merely limited to Cairo (about ten thousand protesters), Suez and Alexandria (a couple of thousand each) and two more towns with protesters in only hundreds. At this point, the police was still on duty in most of the places, none of the countries had come out to criticize Mubarak even mildly, the military had not taken sides and none of the international observers had come to the conclusion that Mubarak will go. Even the political parties including Muslim Brotherhood, which had been royally screwed by Mubarak in 2010 elections, had shown only minor dissent.

From there it all went downhill for Mubarak, beginning from his announcement to fire his cabinet. Immediately after the firing, the numbers began to grow (29 Jan; on 31 they reach 250,00), eventually reaching millions (1 Feb), policemen began to desert (29 Jan), the military excused itself from the whole conflict (30 Jan) and world leaders started to hint that may be Mubarak should retire (1 Feb).

And it all began with that first inch that Mubarak gave. Any child will tell you that the whole point of a staring contest is not to blink first. In Egypt, the standoff was precisely a staring contest. The core group of protesters, finding strength in numbers, was picketing few but strategic points in Cairo. But they were not of large enough numbers or organized well-enough to actually cause any damage. If contained and handled properly, they would have, eventually lost steam. It was only after 28 Jan that the situation escalated to disaster levels for the government.

The moral of the story, for other dictators in Middle East, which are about to be hit with similar protests, take steps to appease the people right now or don’t take them at all when faced with the protests.

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