Mubarak Sets Up Constitutional Reform Panels
CAIRO - In its latest effort to defuse public anger amid mass protests, embattled President Hosni Mubarak's regime set up a committee Tuesday to recommend constitutional changes that would relax presidential eligibility rules and impose term limits.
However, a massive crowd of anti-government protesters poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square again Tuesday, joined for the first time by a young leader of the campaign the day after he was released from detention and wept through a televised interview where he declared: "We are not traitors."
The renewed energy given the protesters by Wael Ghonim's release and emotional TV interview sheds some doubt on the success of Mubarak's attempts to diffuse tensions.
The tens of thousands of protesters stood should-to-shoulder, one of the biggest crowds so far, and gave a resounding answer to the question of whether they still had the momentum to go on even though two weeks of streets fights and sit-ins have not achieved their singular goal of ousting the entrenched Mubarak.
Mubarak's decrees were announced on state television by Vice President Omar Suleiman, who also said that Mubarak had decreed the creation of a separate committee to monitor the implementation of all proposed reforms. The two committees would start working immediately, but Suleiman did not give details about who would sit on the panels or how they would be chosen.
The government has promised several concessions since an uprising began two weeks ago but so far they have fallen short of protesters' demands that Mubarak step down immediately instead of staying on through September elections. Tuesday's decision was the first concrete step taken by the longtime authoritarian ruler to implement promised reforms.
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Mubarak also ordered a probe into clashes last week between the protesters and supporters of the president. The committee would refer its findings to the attorney-general, Suleiman said.
"The youth of Egypt deserve national appreciation," he quoted the president as saying. "They should not be detained, harassed or denied their freedom of expression."
Thousands of protesters, meanwhile, remained camped out in the central Tahrir Square. Many said they were inspired by Ghonim, the 30-year-old Google Inc. marketing manager who was a key organizer of the online campaign that sparked the first protest on Jan. 25. Straight from his release from 12 days of detention, Ghonim gave an emotionally charged television interview, sobbing at times over those who have been killed. He dubbed the protests "the revolution of the youth of the Internet."
About 90,000 people have joined a Facebook group nominating Ghonim to be their spokesman. Many demonstrators reject a group of officially sanctioned and traditional Egyptian opposition groups that have been negotiating with the government on their behalf in recent days.
Some on the square chanted "Wael Ghonim is coming today," although his planned afternoon appearance couldn't immediately be confirmed.
In the midst of his new visibility within the protest movement, Ghonim has remained humble.
"I am not a hero," he said Monday. "I am a very ordinary person. The heroes are the ones in the street."
Tuesday's announcement came two days after Suleiman met for the first time with representatives of opposition groups, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood - the country's largest and best organized opposition group - to debate a way out of the ongoing political crisis.
The fundamentalist Islamic group issued a statement before Suleiman's announcement Tuesday calling the reforms proposed so far as "partial" and insisting that Mubarak must go to ease what it called the anger felt by Egyptians who face widespread poverty and government repression.
In recent days, the Mubarak regime has tried several measures to assuage the protesters' discontent. On Monday, the government announced a 15 percent pay raise for public servants.
Egypt's state-run news agency reported that Mubarak also ordered the country's parliament and its highest appellate court to reexamine lower-court rulings disqualifying hundreds of ruling party lawmakers for campaign and ballot irregularities, that were ignored by electoral officials - possibly paving the way for new elections.
The ruling National Democratic Party won more than 83 percent of the 518 seats in the 2010 parliamentary elections, which were widely condemned as being rigged.
Judicial officials also promised to start the questioning on Tuesday of three former ministers and a senior ruling party official accused of corruption charges after they were dismissed by Mubarak last week. The cabinet reshuffle was intended to placate protesters by removing some of the most hated officials in the government.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood also accused pro-Mubarak thugs of detaining protesters, including Brotherhood supporters, and handing them over to the army's military police who torture them.
"We call on the military, which we love and respect, to refrain from these malicious acts," said the statement.
The protesters have said they would not enter negotiations with the regime before Mubarak's departure. Mubarak insists that he intends to serve the remainder of his current, six-year term, which expires in September, and that he would die in Egypt, thus rejecting any suggestion that he should leave the country.
The president went on with official business Tuesday, receiving the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates. The official Middle East News Agency said Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan delivered a message from the UAE's president but gave no further details.