Pro-democracy protesters confront police in Suez.
By Jeff Kaye
January 31, 2011 -- MyFDL -- While much analysis has focused on the youth-social network driven
aspects of the recent uprising in Egypt, or on diplomatic and political
maneuvers that thus far have left President Mubarak in office, and given
even more power to the state repressive apparatus through the
appointment of intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to the vice-presidency,
it is the Egyptian working class that holds the future of its country in
its hands.
The organised workers' movement saw its unions gutted by state
privatisation and the gutting of union independence though the hated Law
No. 100, which guaranteed that union representation would be strongly
controlled by the state. However, recent events, particularly in strategic Suez,
have shown that when the social weight of the workers is thrown into the
balance, even all the machinations of Hillary Clinton’s State
Department will not be able to patch together Mubarak’s state apparatus.
The question then will be, what will follow it?