#egypt #tahrir Will Egypt's generals listen to Cairo protesters now? violence of the past three days, claiming some 20 lives

@hoda_osmanHoda Osman

Will Egypt's generals listen to Cairo protesters now? t.co/8hx5tHdE #egypt #tahrir

Mubarak’s man: the key military figure is Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, chairman of the Supreme Council Photo: DAPD

By David Blair

9:02PM GMT 21 Nov 2011

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Less than a year ago, when Tahrir Square was clogged by nothing more dangerous than Cairo’s notorious traffic, Egypt’s weary people would offer shrugs of cynical indifference over the self-serving transgressions of their rulers. The violence of the past three days, claiming some 20 lives and filling the centre of the capital with scenes of battle and clouds of noxious tear gas, serves as a vivid reminder that Hosni Mubarak’s downfall has transformed the politics of his country.

Emboldened by their successful revolution nine months ago, ordinary Egyptians are no longer prepared to tolerate the behaviour of their leaders. This message seems to have got through to the country’s civilian cabinet ministers, all of whom offered their resignations last night. But it appears lost on the shadowy generals, styling themselves the supreme Council Of The Armed Forces, who have been the real power in Egypt since Mr Mubarak fled Cairo In February.

When they proposed last week to guarantee the military budget against any scrutiny, while also giving themselves the power to veto the new, post-dictatorship constitution that should be finalised next year, the generals appeared to calculate that the population would respond with nothing more dangerous than the traditional grumbles and hand-wringing.

If that was their gamble, it has failed in spectacular fashion. Crowds have filled Tahrir Square’s drab expanse of cracked and litter-strewn concrete, studded with wilting palm trees and overlooked by the national museum to the north and a brutalist official building, resembling the worst excesses of looming Stalinist architecture, on the southern side. Egypt’s unlikely crucible of popular discontent – a public square that is ugly and famous in equal measure – has been taken over by the regime’s opponents once more.

The military leadership’s response to this challenge made matters even worse. Instead of tolerating the demonstrators in the spirit of the post-revolutionary times, security forces under the command of the interior ministry fired tear gas and rubber bullets on Saturday. Some reports circulating yesterday suggested they had also resorted to live rounds