1. Mubarak's reaction to the protests should have happened BEFORE the protests took place. A true patriotic president would have pushed for the protesters' demands on his own, without any protests since those are basic human rights and steps towards real democracy. Mubarak had thirty years to work towards those goals and he seemed to totally ignore them and work for an unpublished agenda. For this reason, this guy CANNOT be the Egyptian president for one day longer. The only thing keeping him in power was his power, this was clearly destroyed in the protests.
2. Mubarak's reaction during the protests were reactions of a man who is clinging with all he has to his chair. Starting from trying to control the protests through riot police, the meaningless speeches, the slow reactions to the people's demands, ignoring the people demanding him to step down, the military showdown over Tahrir Sq. among many other things.
3. Appointing a vice president and allowing opposition parties to be heard and represented in the presidential elections is a normal thing that should have been done around thirty years ago. Plot Mubarak's actions on a graph and you will immediately see the patterns emerge. He never does something for the good of the people unless he absolutely has to.
4. The opposition groups were utterly stupid during the protests. I, a total political ignorant, predicted that Mubarak announcing that he will not run for the upcoming elections in a few months will result in a lot of unrest for the protesters although this is one of the best scenarios to support a transition of the power without chaos taking over the country. The opposition leaders should have made a formal proposal as follows:
- Mubarak does not run for any further elections, neither will his son.
- Amendments of the constitution that guarantee of presence of a number of diverse candidates.
- Further amendments that guarantee the supervision from the international community of the elections and that guarantee free and fair elections.
- Even further amendments to limit the number of successive presidential terms to only two.
- Mubarak does not pursue his presidential roles until the elections and all roles be transfered to the vice president Omar Sulaiman.
- Change of the governoment.
- Undoing all actions of media and internet censorship immediately
Then push Mubarak to give in for this proposal. Had this happened, everybody would be on his way home happy by now.
5. The Egyptian media and the Egyptian state TV were completely unprofessional during the protests. Coverage of the events were almost always either making false claims or massively under-reporting what is happening. The Egyptian media seemed to be totally driven by politics. This further supports other evidence, like internet censorship, that Mubarak is still, as always, ready to do whatever he can to stay in power. So far, there has been no indicators that he will discontinue this behaviour.
6. The will of the people is the utter most important thing in the whole matter. If the people say that the president goes, then he immediately goes. It is the people's country and if the majority chooses to destroy it, then it is their complete right. Most of Egyptians, and especially Mubarak, seem not to understand this at all. By the way, this is called "Democracy".
Conclusion, I am still not happy about the current state. Mubarak must stop all presidential roles immediately as he cannot be trusted to be in power any further. It might be acceptable for him to just fill the chair for this transitional period until the upcoming elections in 8 months.
