Mubarak says that he will not be leaving office

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/10/live-blog-feb-10-egypt-protests

by jim_h • 15 years ago

124 87 15 years ago

blogs.aljazeera.net

jim_h2• 15 years ago

I wonder what the armed forces in Egypt are going to do. Will there be a coup?

ldayley• 15 years ago

I don't feel as though I know enough about Egypt and the political sentiment there to comment directly, but I sense that this is a very historical moment in time for the entire Middle East.

kasted• 15 years ago

m night twist

elvirs• 15 years ago

Son of a bitch

sammville• 15 years ago

I actually thought he had come to his right senses!

jim_h2• 15 years ago

Some key elements of the speech. Not exact wording, but key phrases.

"I announced that I will not be running in the next presidential elections." "I also announced that I will remain shouldering the responsibilities until September."

allwein• 15 years ago

When I heard that, and given the political corruption there, I'm anticipating that he's going to be unanimously re-elected by write-in vote or something even though he's not actually "running".

kprobst• 15 years ago

I've also said on occasion that I have to "shoulder the responsibilities" of watching football in my PJs all Sunday. No one at my household is fooled by it either.

JoachimSchipper• 15 years ago

... ouch. This is going to be bloody.

Alex39174• 15 years ago

That was probably the point of the CIA starting this rumor in the first place.

eli2• 15 years ago

Why would the CIA want it to get bloody?

nym• 15 years ago

Source?

cubtastic71• 15 years ago

Scared to see what happens by the end of the weekend. You could hear the crowds tone change as the man spoke trying to cling on to his power.

obiefernandez• 15 years ago

I'm glued to AlJazeera at the moment and have definitely been following the whole story with enthusiastic interest since the beginning.

BUT

Why are we discussing this topic here again? Seems completely off-topic...

robryan3• 15 years ago

Pretty much every piece of really significant world news gets discussed here, no matter what the topic. I find that fine, as long as the bar is high enough that it's not all the time.

siavosh2• 15 years ago

Agreed, it actually makes me feel proud that this community is so well rounded...unlike a lot of other fields.

arjn• 15 years ago

I agree, how does this qualify as hacker news ? There are other websites where this has its place.

mindcrime• 15 years ago

I agree that it's not exactly "on topic" in the traditional sense, but it's important enough in the general sense, that a lot of hackers actually are interested. At the end of the day, what's on-topic or not reduces to what people vote up and/or don't vote up. People want to discuss this, so it's on topic unless pg or an editor decide they don't like it for some reason, and manually axe it.

yogiprerna• 15 years ago

agreed. it's also widely considered to be a technology-inspired revolution.

zeteo6• 15 years ago

I have no sympathy for Mubarak, but the way the mass-media has been covering this has been totally one-sided. There are a few interesting technical sides of the story (Internet getting shut down), but overall the whole thing smacks too much of propaganda. So I agree that the general story has no place on HN.

derleth• 15 years ago

Does every story have an "other side" like you seem to expect? What if Mubarak really is just another kleptocratic authoritarian now showing possible signs of mental instability with his "I'll leave/I'm staying" schtick? Is it the media's job to make that seem sympathetic?

In fact, I'll go further with this: One of the big things I hate about (American) mainstream media is that it tries too hard to give "both sides" of a one-sided issue. A case in point is the whole thing about whether vaccines cause autism: Informed people knew from pretty much day one that they don't, and that the whole supposed 'debate' was completely manufactured by a combination of cynical lawsuit-mongers and abysmally ignorant celebrities. Yet you'd have never known that from how respectfully those trolls were treated and how seriously the 'debates' were handled in the mainstream media.

That's actually a somewhat common critique of the media; I'm bringing it up now because what you said happened to clang on it to some extent. I'm not trying to attack you with it.

jeromec2• 15 years ago

You're right that according to the site's guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) political stories are usually off-topic.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

However, there is an exception given for "interesting new phenomenon". I would say revolutions of a scale not seen in a region for thousands of years would qualify.

ebiester• 15 years ago

Turkey? Iran?

smackay• 15 years ago

What is most compelling about this is first it was Tunisia, then Egypt. Who is next?

If it continues it will probably be world-changing no matter what the outcome.

tptacek3• 15 years ago

It is completely off-topic.†

People will want meat to dig into for a meta-argument about global politics and I'm not going to offer it up, but let it just be said: it's very bad for HN that this stuff is being covered so prominently on the site. It absolutely, positively a slippery slope.

The site is clearly tacking away from serving entrepreneurial hackers and towards serving smart people who want a place to talk about everything they care deeply about.

I'm not writing my goodbye note or anything, but I'm having more and more of my best conversations in private cliques and off HN because HN is becoming less and less hospitable to those kinds of conversations.

† Need evidence? Graham appears to have manually weighted it off the front page; just a little while ago, a Mubarak story was parked there with 237 votes.

siavosh2• 15 years ago

And also for the fact that social networks have played such a large role.

jimfl• 15 years ago

It is very much off topic. However, my interest in what this community has to say about it is of abiding interest.

jbooth2• 15 years ago

You're right. Let's discuss why we're discussing it, instead.

mrleinad• 15 years ago

Because it's an interesting phenomenon as previosly stated, and because we're talking about a politician that managed to cut off an entire country from the Internet.

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

I'd say a developing grass-roots democratic revolution in the middle east is of supreme interest to most people here, as is evidenced by the stories being atop the front page.

Don't worry, we're not turning into reddit. This is just some momentous shit (pardon my french), and it would be pretty silly not to have breaking developments up here.

ErrantX• 15 years ago

I think... the protesters won't accept it. I also think the ball is in the military's court now, they've come down quite heavily on the side of the protesters.

Crucially the army leaders seem to have made some quite strong statements tonight when it looked like he was leaving.

foenix• 15 years ago

Full story is up: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011210...

BigZaphod• 15 years ago

Oh.... he'll be leaving, I think. Perhaps not in one piece, though. :/

bryanh• 15 years ago

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Any violence on either side means many, many people will be killed in the struggle.

stcredzero2• 15 years ago

Mubarak has very strong personal motivations for staying and executing a calm hand-off of power. Other dictators have expatriated themselves suddenly, then later discovered their former countries repatriating their money.

I suspect Mubarak knows he's finished. But he knows that he has to make an orderly withdrawal and broker deals to ensure his family is provided for in their accustomed style. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to play well with that crowd. This looks to me a bit too much like the situation in Tienanmen Square.

gaius2• 15 years ago

Other dictators have expatriated themselves suddenly, then later discovered their former countries repatriating their money.

I don't think Mubarak has to worry about that. His close friend King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has already stated any aid that the US withdraws, he will make up. Money is not an issue in this.

cabalamat3• 15 years ago

It's not aid from the USA that Mubarak is worried about, it's his personal billions. He wants them safely away from where a future Egyptian government can get at them.

silverlake2• 15 years ago

Mubarak is baiting the protesters to become violent so he has an excuse to crack down on them. This will get messy soon.

ugh2• 15 years ago

I very much doubt that the military would be willing to follow such orders, even given violent incidents. They might but I don’t think that Mubarak has currently anything like absolute power over the military.

Qz4• 15 years ago

The military has never really been Mubarak's tool of repression, but rather the police force as well as hired thugs.

silverlake2• 15 years ago

Mubarak can only hang on because the military supports him. The military is a giant conscript army of regular kids, and a corrupt officer corp that controls a giant chunk of the Egyptian economy. Those officers will never release their grip on the country. They will replace Mubarak with another strongman.

mousa2• 15 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised. Desperation move but I suspect someone if not him specifically has been trying to do this since this whole thing started. They violently defended themselves on the night of Feb. 3/4 but immediately went back to peaceful when the attacks stopped. Another expected reaction would be rioting, burning, and looting, which has yet to happen.

I hope they can restrain themselves this time too until Mubarak wakes up from his dream, but there is a ton of anger now.

Qz4• 15 years ago

Exactly. The last time he gave a speech, it was the very next day that the supposed pro-Mubarak supporters turned Cairo into a medieval warzone.

joelmichael• 15 years ago

Until September. And who would you have him give power to? There is no democratically selected replacement. Which is why he is waiting for an election, in which he will not be a contender, to give power. People will have time to vet and debate the candidates. You'd rather there be a power struggle amongst radicals leading an angry mob, to see who replaces Mubarak as dictator? I think Mubarak is doing the sensible thing, and at least deserves the benefit of the doubt.

cabalamat3• 15 years ago

Your arguments make sense, and if Mubarak had announced this a week ago, it would have flown. But I doubt the feeling of the people will allow this now. I will be surprised if Mubarak lasts until September, and if he does it won't be without a bloodbath.

robryan3• 15 years ago

Why not hand over power to a deputy until September then? It seems to me that the people really just want him to go, sure they won't support who he hands it over to but I think it will buy them calm until September.

roc• 15 years ago

> "And who would you have him give power to?"

I'm sure the Vice President, while quite possibly a stooge, is perfectly capable of running things until September. As are at least a dozen cabinet- or governor-level officials.

That Mubarak would have picked the interim leader doesn't delegitimize the process any more than his staying in place. It would instead underscore his promise and intent to not seek re-election, to not manipulate the process and to seek a peaceful transition of power.

And the idea that an interim leader would instead retain power for themselves is farcical. The Egyptian people have expressed their will and surely they could do it again. Unless the entire military apparatus wheeled around on the people, there is simply no option whereby an interim governor could crown themselves dictator.

mousa2• 15 years ago

I think the VP and the parliament chair have exhausted any trust too as they've been trying to demonize the protesters for a week. Military guy + committee of OK ministers and opposition is probably going to happen

_delirium2• 15 years ago

Strange. The military was hinting pretty strongly all day that something major would happen in this speech, but the speech seems generic and has no real concessions over the previous one. Wonder if the military was the one misleading, or being misled.

radicaldreamer• 15 years ago

Could be posturing by some in the military for a coup attempt

phlux• 15 years ago

Wouldn't his refusal to step down in the speech be a major revelation given that the expectation was that the speech would announce his stepping down?

I'd say that "Mubarak announces he will not step down during his speech which was to announces his leave..." is something major.

teyc• 15 years ago

Maybe we can turn this into a useful HNer discussion.

Has anyone been involved with enterprise sales where one part of the company is supportive of the project while another isn't. The worst thing is no one knows what is really going to happen and a turf war is about to break out. The US administration is like the sales guy trying to influence the outcome, but really has very little ability to guide the result.

csomar• 15 years ago

The day before Tunisia dictator departure, he made a talk to the Tunisian people. (It's good to note here that in 13 January no one is calling to his departure, but just angry population due to the situation).

The president made some good decisions: lowered the prices of food, removed Internet censorship (yes, even Wikileaks worked), said that we can protest freely, promised to sue the snipers....

After the talk, I didn't feel like that something has changed [1]. Actually, me and my family and my friends, nothing has really changed and it's like he had said nothing. I was happy with YouTube uncensored, not more. The day after that one, Tunisians walked in masses asking for his departure.

What I wanted to say here is that the scenario is quite different. ZBA (Tunisia old president) worked on his last talk to lower the tensions. It hadn't worked out. Now in Egypt, the leaders are rising the tensions (asking the protests to go home and actually not giving anything). I'm seriously afraid about tomorrow that the current government still has plans to flow more blood.

[1] I noted my feeling because some journalists that day said that the talk is revolutionary (like opening the doors for opposition). I think, and from experience, after 23 and 29 years of the life under such regime, what the population wants is the leader and his party to go and not jobs, money or freedom.

adolph• 15 years ago

I think the word "voluntarily" is missing from the title.

Mubarak says that he will not be leaving office

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