Scorn on Arab streets as Mubarak clings to power (News Feature)

By dpa correspondents Feb 2, 2011, 13:52 GMT

Tunis/Algiers - Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak's attempt to bottle the popular uprising against his 30-year rule with the announcement that he would step down in September met with widespread derision on the streets of the Arab world Wednesday.

In Tunisia, heartland of the so-called Arab Spring, where mass protests toppled autocratic leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali last month, newspaper headlines reflected the belief of many that Mubarak, 82, would not be able to cling on for long.

'Mubarak 'has until Friday',' the front page of Le Temps, a French language daily read, quoting demonstrators in Cairo, who, on hearing his speech Tuesday evening, vowed another mass protest on the day of Muslim prayers.

'Mubarak's reign is over,' the Arabic-language Assabah newspaper declared on its front page.

On Facebook, many of the young Tunisians who were behind the protests that overthrew Ben Ali mocked the 82-year-old Mubarak's promises of reform.

On the eve of his flight into exile, Ben Ali, 74, had also promised not to seek another term as president beyond the end of his mandate in 2014. Like Mubarak, Tunisia's leader of 27 years also formed a new government. All to no avail.

Proud of their revolutionary stripes, some Tunisians have formed a Facebook page in support of the Egyptian 'revolution'.

'He has to join Ben Ali in Saudi Arabia. He doesn't have a choice,' one contributor, Mabrouk Kouaib wrote.

In Algeria, where many people stayed up late to watch Mubarak's speech live on television, the popular reaction was also one of disappointment as a million-strong protest in Cairo fell short of its aim.

Noting the Egyptian army's promise not to open fire on protesters, El Watan, a liberal Algerian daily, declared: 'From now on, all Hosny Mubarak can do is follow Ben Ali and ask for asylum in one of the Gulf countries that show solidarity with dictatorships.'

The government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of 12 years, which is also seen as vulnerable, gave no reaction to the speech.

A spike in basic food prices triggered riots in oil-rich Algeria in December. Several young men have publicly set themselves alight and several strikes have been called for the coming days to protest the 'gerontocracy' as critics have taken to calling regimes run by elderly autocrats.

El Watan on Wednesday published a letter from Bensaad Ali, an Algerian author and academic living in exile in France calling on Bouteflika to step down as the 'best solution for Algeria and for you.'

Meanwhile, further afield, in Yemen, opposition demonstrators were planning an Egypt-style Day of Rage Thursday, also to press for more basic freedoms and democratic reforms.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since 1978, has said he will not seek another term in office beyond 2013 and called for the opposition to join him in a national unity alliance. The demonstrations were still set to go ahead.

Jordan also has experienced huge demonstrations, leading King Abdullah II to task prime minister Maruf Bachit with forming a new government, after first trying to ease the protests by announcing lower food prices.

Pro-Iranian militant group Hezbollah said the wave of change sweeping North Africa and the Middle East backed its resistance against Israel.

'The wind of change which is today happening in the Arab world brings positive atmosphere and mainly backs the resistance (Hezbollah and others) in their confrontation against the Zionist project in Palestine.'

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