Mubarak supporters mount own protest

Not everyone in Egypt wants President Hosni Mubarak to go.

While those with revolutionary fervor gathered Tuesday by the tens of thousands a mile down the Nile at Tahrir Square, a small but vociferous band of Egyptians more easily counted by the hundreds marched up and down a two-block stretch of the corniche hours before Mubarak announced that he would not seek re-election.

“Hosni Mubarak is our father. We are the Egyptian people,” Ahmed Ismail, 33, a teacher and wrestling team captain, screamed into the face of a reporter who was surrounded, pulled and poked at by two dozen citizens eager to have their views heard.

For this vastly outnumbered group, numbers were nonetheless important.

“If there are 1 million people in Tahrir, then the other 79 million Egyptians want Hosni Mubarak,” asserted Reeb Tafareh, 29, who lives in the well-off suburb of Nasser City with her engineer husband.

“Thousands of people are coming to join us, thousands,” promised Ashraf Farag, 40, a jewelry store owner who lived for 14 years in Detroit, though there was little evidence as the day went on that his prophecy would be realized.

With the national anthem blaring from loudspeakers, the counter-demonstrators marched in front of the Foreign and Information ministries, heavily guarded by soldiers backed up by a phalanx of tanks and armored personnel carriers.

When a senior police officer, one of the few wearing a uniform in public here Tuesday, joined the ranks, he was mobbed by men hugging and kissing him on the cheek.

“The police and the people are one!” the crowd chanted, expressing a sentiment decidedly not shared by the far larger group at Tahrir Square, who last week clashed violently with police loyal to Mubarak until the highly popular army moved in.

At the anti-government mass protest rally Tuesday, it was the military that was being embraced, with chants of “Army of the people!” and “No to violence against the army!”

For the most part, the subset of Mubarak supporters consisted of those with something to lose, such as engineers, government employees and shop owners. Though one man said he was a driver and another an auto mechanic, there was an air of class distinction in the marchers’ comments.

“The poor people think that if Mubarak leaves they will be rich,” said Farag, the jeweler. “Will the price of meat drop from $3 [a pound] to 30 cents if he goes?”

“These people take four wives and have 15 or 20 kids and then wonder why they are poor,” said Hani Farouk, 33, who lives in the wealthy suburb of Maadi.

As much as anything, those participating in the rally seemed desperate to cling to the status quo.

Referring to the presidential elections scheduled this year, Nabil Beshai, a 31-year-old pharmaceutical salesman, said, “We need Mubarak for seven months.... If Mubarak goes now, then there will be destruction. We need Mubarak for stability until the elections.”

tim.phelps@latimes.com