Demonstrations are continuing in Egypt on Thursday, while leading pro-reform advocate Mohamed ElBaradei is due to land in Cairo. With unrest spreading from Tunisia to Egypt, the German press wonders if the Arab world is seeing a transformation similar to that experienced by the former Soviet bloc in 1989.
The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:
"The fate of the 82-year-old Mubarak, who has been in power for almost 30 years, will not just be decided on the streets, but also in the White House. … Egypt is the most important US ally in the region apart from Israel. Representatives from the government in Washington practically have a seat at the cabinet table in Cairo. What is being discussed behind closed doors will be the decisive factor, not the official announcements from Washington."
"Three months ago the Egyptian president had every opportunity to introduce a new political openness. That would have lead to a parliament in which all of the most important forces in the country --- from the secular opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood -- would have been represented. That would in turn have ensured that the forthcoming presidential elections would have had more than one candidate."
"That, however, would have been the beginning of the end for the regime. It is well known that Mubarak decided for another option. But the era of paralysis in Egypt, that has seen no culture of political change for half a century, ended on Tuesday."
The conservative Die Welt writes:
"Many experts had assumed that the entrenched security apparatuses in countries like Syria and Egypt were insurmountable. But Western experts said the same about the communist Eastern Bloc at the end of the 1980s. Hardly anyone realised at the time just how ailing these regimes really were internally. Nor how easily they could fall once enough citizens had learned to overcome their fear."
"Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, no region has shown itself as resistant to democratic change as (the Middle East). Nowhere has seen such stagnation at the levels of politics, culture and society. What we are now witnessing, however, is not the feared 'Arab Street' but people like you and me, who don't see why their dictators should deny them the right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' as the American Declaration of Independence stipulates. It remains to be seen if these efforts will succeed. But whoever searches for a path toward freedom and democracy deserves our respect -- and our support."
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:
"Egypt has long been regarded as a powder keg. And while Islamists play no role socially or politically in Tunisia, in Egypt they are the strongest opposition force. They control important economic positions and operate a tight network of charitable institutions, which makes them so popular among the poorer sectors of society. It is hard to imagine an united opposition like that in Tunisia. In addition, Egypt has the strongest army in the Arab region, is a regional power and an important pillar of American Middle East policy. The US, on which the regime in Cairo relies for financial support, will seriously push for democratization if this promises more stability than the current Mubarak regime."
"Just as the strike by dockworkers in Gdansk in 1980 lead to the founding of Solidarity and the beginning of a process that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, so the Tunisian revolution could in a decade be looked back upon as the signal for the emancipation of the Arab world from autocratic rulers. That is the optimistic hypothesis."
"The alternative: Islamist movements profit from the ossification of the regimes and the paralysis of society."
SPIEGEL ONLINE
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