CAIRO – President Hosni Mubarak's statement last month that Egypt's next election will involve multiple candidates - instead of being simply a referendum on his rule - unleashed a rush of opposition activity here.
Demonstrations by largely secular and left-wing groups have become commonplace, as have press attacks on the president and his family. But Sunday, with the outlawed but politically powerful Muslim Brotherhood set to join the fray, the regime sent a clear signal on the limits of dissent.
Starting at dawn, the government arrested about 70 members of the Brotherhood in Cairo and three other cities....
Mr. Mubarak has allowed unlicensed protests in recent months by Kafaya. But an emboldened Brotherhood, which has offices in every province and is the country's largest opposition organization, was too much for the government to take.
"The reason for the escalation by state security is the difference in size and influence between the Muslim Brotherhood and the other opposition groups," says Ahmed Ramy, a Brotherhood member.
Read the whole thing here.
There are several important points to note here.
1) After the first shock of democratic revolutions authoritarian regimes in Egypt and elsewhere are beginning to toughen up and to systematically respond to democratic challenges.
2) Egypt has been under intense pressure from the United States to liberalize its political system and has responded by tolerating protests from marginal groups. The fact that demonstrations by only marginal groups were tolerated indicates the limits of US influence. Pressure from the west cannot instigate meaningful democratic reform.
3) There has been a lot of excitement in the West [and particularly in the blogosphere] regarding the mounting reform demands of groups like the Kafaya (Enough) movement, which the CSM describes as "a range of secular organizations with limited grass-roots support." We should temper our enthusiasm with the realization that secular elites do not a mass movement make.
4) The Muslim Brotherhood is a real mass movement, and it has at last roused itself with demands for democratic reform, but this, as the CSM admits, does not reflect an acceptance on the Brotherhood's part of western liberal traditions. The Brotherhood is strongly anti-western and anti-US and does not accept as legitimate the secular protest movements upon which so much western attention has been lavished.
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