Election outcome unknown, but radicals won't win.
by Gwynne Dyer
After 11 demonstrators were killed outside the Ministry of Defence in Cairo early this month, Mohammad al-Assaf, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), expressed his astonishment that anybody might suspect the military of wanting to rig the forthcoming presidential elections in Egypt. "The armed forces and its supreme council are committed to handing over power at the scheduled time or even before 30 June," he said.
State television, still controlled by supporters of the old regime, explained that the people who attacked the demonstrators were local residents of the Abbassiya district who had grown sick of continued demonstrations. What could be more understandable than that?
It's so easy to imagine the men of Abbassiya spontaneously rummaging around in their houses for pistols and shotguns, determined to end the nuisance that made it almost impossible to get to the new metro station. Then they gathered at 2 am in two separate groups and simultaneously charged the demonstrators from two different directions, as random mobs of disgruntled citizens so often do.
Nine of the 11 dead demonstrators were killed by head shots, a sure sign that amateurs were at work. Only a died-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist would suspect that the attackers were the same old gang of thugs-for-hire that the old regime turned to when it wanted to use deniable but lethal violence on crowds of demonstrators..
About Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.