Egypt's dictatorial president was slow to respond to protests -- and then too stubborn to save himself



Few of the organizers of Egypt's demonstrations ever dreamed that their call for a day of protest on January 25 would lead to the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. One of the organizers had earlier confided to me that he expected the call to attract only a few hundred people. He said he planned to spend the day playing Pictionary with his protesting friends.

Only 18 days later, Mubarak resigned under pressure from hundreds of thousands of protesters and a military leadership that refused to continue supporting him. But the uprising would not have been so successful without the help of Mubarak himself. The president, in reacting to the protest movement, made five crucial mistakes that contributed to his own downfall.

1) Snail-Pace Response

Mubarak did not want to repeat Ben Ali's "mistake" -- cutting and running. As a former fighter pilot under attack, he appeared to believe he could dodge, outmaneuver, and land safely. His advisors, led by his son and interior minister, look to have convinced him that the protesters were just a bunch of Facebook kids who could be suppressed and dispersed in a few days. His strategy was to buy as much time as possible. It took Mubarak four days before he appeared in public to address the nation and discuss the political measures he proposed to appease demonstrators. In the meantime, everyone else who had access to a TV screen -- senior US and EU officials, human rights organizations, journalists, etc. -- appealed to the Egyptian regime to respond meaningfully and quickly to the crisis. The contrast between how the world urged Mubarak to respond and what he actually did only further highlighted, for the protesters, the insufficiency of his response. The slow political response enraged the protesters and made them more determined to continue challenging the regime and add more pressure.