Egypts elite drive the protests in Tahrir

These were the Egyptian capitals self-confessed well off residents educated,established,knowledgeable and articulate men and women of the world who had decided they would no longer accept President Mubaraks rule. MNC executives,bankers,top grade university students and academics the cream of Cairos elite,many of them speaking with the worlds media in fluent English camping at Revolution Square determined to bring change.

Abdul Rehman,55,greeted foreign nationals at the Square with a smiling face. He politely checked their passports and asked for their press credentials. His was the final word on who entered the Square scores of organised young men acted on his decision on whom to let in beyond the checkpoints.

Rehman is the CEO of a local telecom company who joined the protest on January 25,frustrated by years of curbs on the right of expression. It is a matter of congestion. For 30 years we have not been allowed to speak,and now is the time to get the right to choose our own leaders, he said.

As part of the booming telecom industry,Rehman is one of the many beneficiaries of the Egyptian economy which grew at 7 per cent for three years before slowing to 4.7 in 2009 and recovering marginally to 5 per cent this year. The secret police picked him up five years ago on suspicion that he was colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood. He wasnt then,said Rehman,but he made sure he joined them immediately after the police released him.

For most people camping out in Tahrir,the driving force is not the lack of financial empowerment but aspirations that are way ahead of a rigged and manipulative political culture.

60-year-old Mohammad Gamat,an engineering consultant based in the UAE,joined the protests after his younger brother fell to a bullet fired by pro-government activists into the crowds at Tahrir on Wednesday.

What we are asking for is freedom. We have the smart minds here,but why not software engineers like the ones you have in India? Because the government does not listen to us, he said.

Gamat cant forget his brothers loss,and says he took to the streets in pure anger against the regime that killed him.

Even as the Egyptian economy has done better than many others in the region it was projected to grow at 6 per cent this year government reforms have not matched the aspirations of the young who have grown increasingly aware of the world,not the least due to technology that has liberated them.

The main January 25 protest that triggered the mass uprising was set up on a social networking site,and the young have since organised a number of sub-movements online.

At Tahrir,a group of fashionably dressed college students from the elite American University collected garbage into neat piles before picking it up with their bare hands to carry to a nearby collection point.

Someone has to keep the area clean. We came here after a call on Facebook for volunteers to clean up, said Lina Geoushy,a business student who spent all morning carrying garbage bags out of the Square. Lots of people had been blogging against the Mubarak government. Now it is like a volcano that has erupted, she said.

The makeshift hospital set up to treat the injured is run by scores of young doctors and medical interns who turned up after hearing about the violence. The government hospitals are flooded and people here need emergency care, said a young doctor who identified himself only as Mehmud. His team of 20-odd volunteers has treated hundreds of demonstrators with cuts and burns over the past two days.

22-year-old pastry shop worker Mohammad has been carrying around a blood-stained shirt for the past two days. On Wednesday,he was hit on the chest by a projectile,and his foot was trampled upon by a camel that was being ridden by a whip-lashing supporter of the regime.

The owner of the pastry shop wants to fire me because I have not gone to work in many days,but after Mubarak goes,there will be lots of jobs, he said.

While the poor continue to be exploited in the battle for Egypt the German publication Der Spiegel reported how Mubaraks supporters were paying poor season-workers to take part in the violent clashes the mood on the street was clear: the elite,the thinking middle class wants Mubarak to go. And they will not accept anything short of that.