CAIRO — While the world turns its attention to the riveting drama in Libya, where revolutionaries are seeking to oust the dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, the revolution next door in Egypt is entering a new phase -- one that is just as exhilarating and consequential as the protests that drove President Hosni Mubarak from power in just 18 incredible days.
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In fact, the revolution may be gaining momentum. The Egyptian people endured Mubarak's reign for 30 years, but 33 days of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq was all it took for them to threaten to take to the streets en masse to demand his ouster. Shafiq, who was appointed by Mubarak during the early days of the revolution in a blatant bid to seem reasonable without conceding much power, was widely seen, along with much of his cabinet, as a relic of the pre-revolutionary era and the man who had overseen -- or at least failed to stop -- some of the most violent attacks against peaceful demonstrators in Tahrir Square.
Shafiq has been replaced by Essam Sharaf, a former minister of transportation and member of the National Democratic Party's Policies Committee -- Mubarak's Politburo, if you will. Sharaf has nevertheless acquired the reputation of being an honest civil servant, having resigned from his ministerial post in 2005 to protest the government's handling of a major train crash. He also earned points with the revolutionaries, having himself led a small protest at Cairo University a few days before Mubarak stepped down.
Shafiq's sacking came just hours after a historic TV interview that saw the prime minister sourly criticized and altogether humiliated by the other panelists, and not long before a massive protest had been scheduled to call for his removal along with several members of his cabinet, as well as the dissolution of the state security apparatus -- known for spying on, detaining, and torturing Egyptian citizens at will -- and the release of political prisoners.
With Shafiq's metaphorical scalp still fresh, the protest went ahead as planned, and Prime Minister Sharaf himself took the podium immediately after the Friday midday prayer. Flanked, surprisingly, by Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed El-Beltagy (who occasionally grabbed the mic to shout a slogan or two), Sharaf was deferential. He saluted the revolution's "martyrs" and pledged allegiance to the crowds: "I get my legitimacy from you," he said. "I will do my best to meet the revolutionary demands and the day I fail I won't be here."
Standing below hastily printed banners showing his smiling face, Sharaf was met with a roar of approval. It was, effectively, the first time the Egyptian street celebrated a political appointment rather than an ousting.
The events that followed took both the state and the revolution's loose leadership by storm. On Friday, the evening of the protest, protesters raided the Alexandria headquarters of the state security apparatus. The next day, as the Army looked on helplessly, a crowd of about 2,000 people barged its way into the state security headquarters in Nasr City, an eastern neighborhood in Cairo, while another group of demonstrators demanded to enter the enormous state security building in 6th of October city, a western suburb of the capital -- a sight that was repeated countrywide, from Marsa Matrouh in the northwest to Qena in the south.
The Nasr City takeover, which I witnessed firsthand, was astonishing. Protesters, joined by masses of people who had personally endured or who had friends or loved ones endure interrogations and detention, raided the huge complex after hearing reports of documents being burned and shredded by state security officers. Some gathered damning documents that had been left behind; others desperately searched for hidden cells containing prisoners who had seemingly been transferred beforehand.
People were walking around, snapping pictures, peeking into offices, opening drawers, sifting through the documents. Weeks ago, people walking through the same corridors would have done so only because they had been brought there against their will and were looking forward to getting out.
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