To elated cheers of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, President Hosni Mubarak has ceded power to the Egyptian military. On Thursday, Mubarak gave a televised address in which he defied expectations and vowed to remain President until elections in September, at which point he would not run for re-election. But furious protesters stood their ground, rallying in cities all over Egypt. Less than 24 hours later, Mubarak’s determination cracked. Mubarak is the second Arab leader to relinquish power in the face of a massive populist uprising. Tunisia's President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali stepped down in the face of overwhelming street protests less than a month ago. “This is the greatest day of my life,” said Nobel Laureate and opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. “The country has been liberated." Though the day is one of celebration for many, it creates far more questions than it answers. What will become of Egypt now? With Mubarak gone will there be real change? Or is this a military coup more than a step towards democracy? With two dictatorships toppled, is the hunger for democracy in the Middle East satisfied, or has the wave of popular revolt only barely begun to rise?
Guests:
David Kirkpatrick, reporter, New York Times currently at the Cario bureau in Egypt
Mahmoud Kassem, Bloomberg Bureau Chief, Cairo
Steven A. Cook, PhD, Senior Fellow, Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
Heba Morayef, researcher in Egypt for Human Rights Watch
Qamar-ul Huda, Ph.D., Scholar of Islam, Senior Program Officer Religion & Peacemaking Center of Innovation, United States Institute of Peace (USIP); editor of The Crescent and Dove: Critical Perspectives on Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam
Hon. Jacob Dayan, Consul General of Israel in LA
Samera Esmeir, assistant professor of Rhetoric at University California, Berkeley. Her expertise is the colonial legal history of Egypt as well as the politics of the Middle East
Josh Lockman, Lecturer in Law at USC Law, where he teaches a course on U.S. foreign policy and international law.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law; leading authority on Islamic law, who also teaches courses related to human rights and terrorism
Ahmed Zewail, Egyptian-American scholar and Nobel laureate and professor of chemistry and physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
Josh Lockman, Lecturer in Law at USC Law, where he teaches a course on U.S. foreign policy and international law
Mona El-Naggar, reporter New York Times, currently at the Cairo bureau