Eyes

Today David Cameron almost echoed exactly Peter Gabriel's lyrics in Biko, which ran 'The eyes of the world are watching now...'

The yet another day of unrest in Egypt was hoped by the protesters to be the day of departure for Mubarak. One can only hope, however whilst the almost proverbial eyes are watching, some loose parallels with an uprising still vivid in my memory are hard not to make...

Here, too, the army's position is unclear... and maybe shifting hour by hour, but at least they have not taken catastrophically drastic action against the protesters (yet).

Here, too, the army has a lot to lose... They enjoyed a superb status, we are talking about a country where they even have their own lanes at tool boots on highways. They have their own transport companies, they really are a parallel universe in Egypt.

Here, too, corruption within the army is happening at vast scale, you can pay off anything and anybody, to get out of tasks or picking where you wish to be posted... or not posted.

They have a lot to lose and it is certain that they will ensure their transference into the next regime, whatever it may be, will be a painless one.

Another loose parallel is that Mubarak is truly deluded into thinking: promising various concessions, reforms, replacing minister X and Y in the government will make the protesters go home. Not sure about them, but when Ceausescu tried similar promises of reform, we decided to continue until the regime falls. Egyptian protesters also marked Mubarak's attempts as 'irrelevant'.

And here, too, the US is watching. They wonder this time what the heck happens if the radical islamists take over... what if they renounce the treaty with Israel... what if... it is again a game of dominos...

I can only watch with hope and share, from admittedly a very, very comfortable distance, the protesters' hopes.

They called themselves today on that main square the 'referendum'... Let's hope that extremists don't manage to hijack what was ignited so successfully.