It took 18 days to dislodge President Hosni Mubarak’s heels from his desperate attempt to cling on to power. He finally threw in the towel on Friday after he had surprised everyone on Thursday, when he said he was not going. This after the army had announced in Tahrir Square that all the demonstrators’ calls for change would be met, implying that the president would be resigning.

Even the White House was taken by surprise indicating that Mubarak had not accepted the terms presented by an army heavily influenced by the US. It is no secret that the White House was in close contact with army leaders and Egyptian army personnel were frequent visitors to the US right up to the week of the uprising.

Until Friday afternoon, when everything changed, I could not understand why the Western Media kept calling what Mubarak had done, by appointing as vice-president Omar Suleiman, a “transfer of power”. It was no such thing and the demonstrators knew that. The same regime was still there, as though it needed to be demonstrated by the speeches of both Mubarak and Suleiman on Thursday.

Politicians are not that stupid and must have known that trying to portray that change could happen while Mubarak was still around was just not going to wash. It certainly was not going to get the Egyptians clamouring for freedom off the streets.

It was nice to see politicians squirm. They were really in a tizz over Egypt. After propping up (mainly the US but also some EU countries) an oppressive police state for years, I was finding their rhetoric nauseating. They were having to hedge and hedge to show people that they of course were in favour of democracy and supported the Egyptian people’s uprising, but they kept insisting they could not interfere. Of course not!

As I opined in “Stability at the cost of oppression” on January 30: Although sympathy is now with the oppressed populace, we have all ignored the plight of the exploited in Egypt and Tunisia and enjoyed cheap holidays there.

On Wednesday, the French prime minister, Francois Fillon, had to admit that the Egyptian government gave his family free accommodation, transport in a private plane and a trip down the Nile after he was exposed in a satirical magazine. Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie is also under scrutiny for accepting transport in a Tunisian businessman’s private plane and a Christmas holiday in Tunisia.

Although these revelations were described as unethical by the Opposition in France stating that politicians, especially the PM and ministers should not be mixing pleasure with their jobs, the story seems to have died in the media. I wonder why?

In the first week of the uprising, after a few days silence Mubarak spoke on National television telling the Egyptian people “I am absolutely on the side of the freedom of each citizen”. That statement was as hollow as it was outrageous, yet US President Barak Obama, while being sympathetic to the people’s uprising was not urging Mubarak to go.

“When President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity. I just spoke to him after his speech and I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise,” Obama told us. But despite all the support Mubarak had received from the US he was not going to be pushed around.

The ambiguous messages from the West, because of the fear of Muslim extremists (the West’s and Israel’s babaw), which Mubarak used to his advantage, encouraged him and gave him time to dig his heels in. He continued feeding the West’s fears that if he left the country immediately the Muslim Brotherhood would take over.

Meanwhile, former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt, Edward Walker, had told the BBC that although Israel was right to be anxious about what was happening in Egypt “It (Israel) tends to exaggerate the strength of the Islamists”. When asked why President Obama had up till now been accommodating towards Mubarak, Mr Walker said “There was always some other reason why we didn’t want to cross him (President Mubarak)”.

After the jets flying low overhead the crowd failed to intimidate the demonstrators and use of the army was not going to happen, on February 2, we saw Mubarak’s thugs on horseback whipping the peaceful demonstrators, in the streets of Cairo on our television screens. The mood suddenly changed. Where violence had been minimal once the feared police had disappeared from the streets, suddenly there was violence and Mubarak’s security forces were targeting journalists.

The next day, Thursday 3, US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told a press conference “The attacks on journalists are part of a concerted effort and do not seem to be random events and the attacks on anti-government protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square by armed supporters of President Hosni Mubarak on February 2 have been traced to “elements … close to the government or the ruling party,” but he added, still giving Mubarak some slack, “ I don’t know that we have a sense of how far up the chain [of command] it went.”

The attacks prompted Egyptian journalist Shaheera Amin to resign from her post at the state run news channel, Nile TV. She said she could no longer support the one-sided reporting and she ended up joining the revolt in the square.

Meanwhile, Obama’s messages were getting clearer by the day and he said on Friday 4 “There is no room for suppression” and on Saturday 5, Hilary Clinton told a press conference “the status quo is simply not sustainable”. Shame it took America too long to realise it.

“Freedoms of assembly, expression and the press are pillars of an open and inclusive society. Governments, must demonstrate their adherence to these rights especially in times of crisis...The Egyptian government, including the army, has a clear responsibility to protect those threatened and to hold accountable those responsible for these attacks,” Clinton said.

By Friday 4, the EU leaders had also upped their message for an orderly transition of power in Egypt and emphasised that it should “start now”, implying that President Mubarak departure in September was not enough and that the transfer of power to a broad-based government “must begin immediately”.

Barak Obama and European leaders were being pushed to take a tougher stand. “If we see on the streets of Cairo today state-sponsored violence by thugs hired to beat up protesters, the regime will lose any remaining credibility it has in the eyes of the watching world, including Britain,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters in Brussels on February 4. But Mubarak was snubbing them all.

Last Sunday in “Price of oppression is now being counted”, I wrote: Mubarak is hoping that the demonstrators will finally tire and exhaustion will drive them back home and submission. However, it seems the demonstrators have only one goal - to see Mubarak out - and are prepared to sit it out until it happens.

And sit it out they did. Rumours were also circulating that the Obama administration was in talks with top Egyptian officials about the possible immediate resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the formation of an interim government that could prepare the country for free and fair elections later this year.

Obama had been facing criticism abroad and at home. Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote in the Washington Post “America unfurls the flag of democracy and human rights rhetorically, but we ally ourselves with “stability” - that is, all too often, with dictatorship...The country would do better were it far less engaged in strengthening militaries and far more involved in supporting democratic governance, civil society and economic development.”

Then of course Mubarak and Suleiman started nailing their coffins when on Wednesday, after the US called on the Egyptian government to lift its 30-year-old state of emergency immediately, Suleiman announced that his country was not ready for democracy, which the White House described as “particularly unhelpful” and had to acknowledge that Vice-President Omar Suleiman may not have been presenting a solution.

Then on Thursday the final bolts were hammered in when the speeches of Mubarak saying he was not going and Suleiman’s telling the demonstrators to go home and back to work only managed to anger the crowds. The crisis then moved to its highest point when everyone was on tenterhooks to see which side the army would finally have to opt for when the already massive revolt was to get even bigger on Friday.

Well we all know what happened next. Jubilation in Freedom Square ensued and Egyptians partied well into the night. The army has now taken over until the country is ready to hold free elections. Of course it is still not all over and there is still a lot we don’t know of what went on behind the scenes in those weeks.

It is also not clear how the army council will manage the situation. There are still many questions pending? Also opposition has been successfully repressed for so long that it is going to take time to get ready for serious elections to take place.

There are also still fears that Egypt might fall from the frying pan into the fire and an Islamist theocracy will take over, which is what Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hoping for. I cannot see that happening. The people who have so bravely fought to get freedom from decades of oppression are not likely to succumb to another form of tyranny.

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