Kifaya and Mubarak

Yesterday I went to two very different events: a press conference by Kifaya, the small movement that is challenging Mubarak to step down by staging illegal street protests; and the massive Mubarak rally that ended the nation's first campaign season. I went without a translator, just by contacting the campaigns, so unfortunately my observations had to be somewhat general. I went anyway because my goal was to gather impressions and contacts as I plan my work in the year ahead.

It took a while to find the Kifaya (Enough!) press conference, which was on the second floor of an old building off of Sharia Sherif, one of Cairo's busiest downtown streets. The press conference itself was in a very small room with maybe two dozen chairs, and a large table at the front where George Ishak, one of the founders of the movement, and four or five other people sat and spoke. The room was hot and noisy, with an open window and no air-conditioning, packed to the gills with mostly Arab journalists and TV cameras. The only decoration was five yellow stickers with the word Kifaya in red letters hapzardly stuck on the wall behind the speakers. The press conference was disorganized and rambing, yet in the end it felt more like a meeting of revolutionaries than a coordinated media appearance, with everyone in the audience encouraged to ask a question or make a statement, and the event running until everyone was done. There was an guy from the state TV ministry who took to the front table to decry corruption in his ministry and complain that local TV covers primarily Mubarak and his family, and a young woman and mother in the back row who complained that Kifaya was disorganized and still an elite movement. She worried that group's members don't even know eachother--she just comes to rallies when she sees them posted in the newspaper--so what will happen if she gets arrested? Will Kifaya as an organization even be there to help? She complained that the organization does not yet have a way to reach out to the masses. She got a lot of nods when she spoke, but no real answers from the leaders at the desk in front.

George Ishak is a grey haired man, about 60, with an expressive face-large lips and bulbous nose. Flanked by a sweaty, owl-eyed lawyer in a full dark suit, and another man in a white short-sleeved shirt working hard on his aqua colored worry beads, Ishak looked calm and intellectual, the leader of the assembled speakers. He explained that people didn't have the freedom to be candidates, so there is no fairness in the election process. "We are adopting the stance of boycotting because this is not an election as generally understood," he said. Kifaya will set up a shadow government after the election and a committee to draft a new constitution.

There are some reports, he said, that there could be a crackdown against the group after the election. But he was defiant:

"Anybody who wants freedom has to be ready to pay the price. We are ready."

Ishak is predicting that there could be a popular uprising aftter the election to topple the regime, because nothing will change and the frustration of the people will rise. "We are against this despotic regime. We will continue," Ishak told me after the conference.

The meeting felt revolutionary, and yet strange, because this was not happening in secret, but in the open, under a government that in the past has reacted harshly to dissent and challenges. Ishak himself has a Marxist background, and it did feel somewhat like the meeting of a leftist cell.

What will happen if Kifaya gets its way? The group has not defined a positive program, or a leader. But its goal now--and if it accomplishes this, it might well be ''Enough''-- is to encourage Egyptians of all creeds and believes to overcome the culture of fear in Egypt that hems people in and prevents them from defining a government for themselves.

The movement seeks not to articulate a goal, but instead to attract discussion and frustration from all groups, Islamist or Marxist, or otherwise. If people of all stripes stand up and say Enough!, they feel that will be enough to create a movement. It is the lack of a program, in fact, that makes the group feel so edgy and perhaps, powerful.

After the meeting, another journalist and I went to have tea with Mohammed, a young man involved in Kifaya. We walked around the corner behind the central bank to a cafe where the group's members often gather. Mohammed said he was working to get over the culture of fear, but that he was still a bit afraid. He quivered slightly as he sat, sweating, in his olive colored suit and maize tie.

more later...