For former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak loyalists, his downfall was a shock and a humiliation. A year later, they still miss their president and watch with bitterness the political upheaval in an Egypt they no longer recognize.
Just how many people still support the former president of 30 years is difficult to estimate. Some are clear about their allegiance, belonging to groups called “the children of Mubarak,” others are more discreet.
For Suad Abdel Nabi, it’s emotional.
“He’s the only president I’ve known. I grew up considering him like a father and, yes, I miss him very much,” the 33-year-old Cairene said.
“We used to watch him on television talking to everyone on national holidays, including to the farmers. For me, he was someone good,” she said.
Abdel Nabi was “devastated” when she saw the former ruler, 83, lying on a stretcher as he was wheeled into court to face charges of involvement in the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising that toppled him.
“How did we get there? It was very painful to watch and I get very angry when I hear people say he’s pretending, because he’s not like that,” she said.
Many like her complain of the insecurity that has swept the country since Mubarak’s downfall, fearing Egypt is falling apart.
“For 30 years, he ensured stability with the outside world, avoiding a new war with Israel, and at home too,” said Dalia, a government employee.
“I was against his resignation because I didn’t want the Muslim Brotherhood. I was worried about the economy, tourism, and my fears have been confirmed. It’s even worse with the Salafists,” she said.
The uprising paved the way for the country’s first ever free and democratic parliamentary elections, which saw Islamist groups dominate almost three-quarters of the assembly.
The powerful Muslim Brotherhood, long banned under Mubarak, won almost half the seats followed by the ultra-conservative Salafists.
Dalia believes that many of the protesters’ demands last year were “legitimate,” but says that Mubarak “did many good things, we mustn’t forget that.”
She says she only joined one pro-Mubarak rally, because she is “against protests in general.”
For several months Mubarak supporters took to Mustafa Mahmud square in central Cairo, holding up pictures of the fallen strongman and insisting they were “the real Egyptians!”
However, at one of their latest demonstrations, they clashed with anti-Mubarak protesters, prompting intervention by the security forces.
On Facebook, groups called “We are sorry, President” and “The children of Mubarak” have multiplied to pay homage to the “guide, the father, the brother, the symbol,” with members ranging from the hundreds to the thousands.
Electronic responses are swiftly organized with counter groups calling themselves “We are not at all sorry, president” or “We are sorry we didn’t topple you sooner.”
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
RSS