Mubarak and Tantawi are two sides of the same coin Statement from the Revolutionary Socialists 1 August

2011 http://www.e-socialists.net/node/7190 Repression is not new to the Mubarak regime, nor to the heirs of al-Adly in the Ministry of the Interior, or his men in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or his slaves in the Military Police. But todays attack on the protest camp in Tahrir with electric batons, which saw protestors dragged about, the martyrs families beaten, the storming of the Omar Makram mosque and the detention of dozens in Abdin at the moment this statement was being written in Tahrir, shows that the regime of the deposed president has shown its true, ugly face of opposition to the revolution and the revolutionaries. It is no surprise that these attacks on the protest camp come just days before the trial of the head of the old regime, as the authorities have wavered between announcing his death and his falling into a coma or into a depression, in desperate and failed attempts to arouse some sympathy for the old dictator, as if his sickness is equal to the blood of the martyrs or the years stolen from the young people incarcerated in his prisons and detention camps. Today the military council, and its caricature of a cabinet and prime minister who imagines that a short walk around Tahrir Square will turn him into a revolutionary declared war on the Egyptian people, particularly on the poor and the young people standing in solidarity with the families of the martyrs. For when the crimes of the military police and the interior ministry forces extend to attacks on the martyrs families under the supervision of []Al-Ruweini, [head of the Military Police] Badeen and the Governor of Cairo, and when [Prime Minister] Essam Sharaf describes the protestors as thugs and when Egyptian TV invites callers to phone in while describing the protestors as thugs and street children, this means that for these people there is no place in Egypt for the poor. It mean that Mubaraks gang are still in power and their businessmen cronies are fed up with the demands of the deprived who form the vast majority of the people. When this happens on the first day of Ramadan, and soldiers storm into the Omar Makram mosque in their boots in order to seize protestors, after a million-strong march last Friday which chanted in favour of the army and the Islamisation of the state, then we know that this military council and its ministers profess no religion and are bound by no covenant except the religion of loyalty to the regime and its interests. The poor, who they describe as thugs, are the same revolutionaries who fought the regime and braved the bullets of its snipers. They are the ones who stood firm in Tahrir Square for 18 days until the regime was forced to change its old face by unmasking another. For Mubarak and Tantawi are nothing more than two sides of the same coin, and Sharaf, who claimed to be a revolutionary, was a member of the Higher Policy Committee of the National Democratic Party which looted Egypt for 30 years.

The poor, who brought the revolution of 25 January to victory, and the families whose children lost their lives to free this country, are the pride of the revolution and its symbol. They will not fear another raid on Tahrir Square, more arrests, or even more martyrs deaths, for they have set out on a road from which there will be no return, and their revolution will continue until victory. Down with Military Council! Down with the Mubarak regime! Glory to the martyrs and power to the people! The Revolutionary Socialists 1 August 2011