Some call it the silent majority. In Egypt these days, the preferred term is the Party of the Couch. And in that ill-defined constituency, sometimes more myth than reality, Egypt’s ruling military has staked its credibility as it seeks to fend off the greatest challenge yet from protesters seeking to force it from power.
Drawing on sentiments pronounced Friday in the grittier parts of Cairo, even just a few blocks from the protests in Tahrir Square, and in a defiantly nationalist rally near the Defense Ministry, the military is offering either a canny read of Egypt’s mood or yet another delusional estimation of its popularity, a mistake that has bedeviled so many autocrats. With a mix of bravado and disdain, it has hewed to a narrative first pronounced after it seized power from President Hosni Mubarak in February: It bears the mantle of Egypt’s revolution.
"Egypt is not Tahrir Square," Maj. Gen. Mukhtar el-Mallah, a member of the 20-member military council ruling since February, said in a news conference this week. "If you take a walk on other streets in Egypt, you will find that everything is very normal."
Receptive audience
In much of Cairo, and elsewhere in Egypt, the military has found a receptive audience for that message in a country buckling under a stagnating economy and a lurking insecurity. Even as it promises to surrender power by June, it has deployed all the platitudes of authoritarian Arab governments: fear of foreign intervention, fear of chaos, and fear of the rabble. One doctor quipped Friday that the sole change since the revolution was an extra digit added this year to cellphone numbers.
"If the military goes, who will inherit power from them?" asked Mohammed Abdel-Aziz, 61, sitting before his watch store in Cairo’s Opera Square. Mr. Mubarak made the same bet, only to depart in disgrace in a helicopter 18 days after protests began in January. The lesson then was that a revolution is not a referendum, and the symbolism channeled by Tahrir Square represented a dynamic long dismissed by Arab rulers. The revolution was sometimes conflated with the square itself, so much so that Essam Sharaf, who resigned as prime minister this week, declared in a visit there in April that "I am here to draw my legitimacy from you."
But back then, there was the military to force Mr. Mubarak’s departure. The question these days is, Who will force the military to relinquish its power?
"They think they can fill up a square?" asked Marwan Helmy, a 65-year-old high school teacher at a boisterous pro-military rally that convened Friday in Abassiya, a few miles from the far bigger antimilitary demonstration in Tahrir Square. "We will fill all the streets of Egypt and support the military. We can’t be silent any longer, the country is unraveling. Who gave them the right to represent us? Tahrir is not Egypt!"
Thousands turned out for the Abassiya rally, waving flags, chanting slogans more visceral than meditated and crowding overpasses and the square below. In its ardor, it seemed to manifest a militant nationalism that added a new wrinkle to all the divides in Egypt pitting Islamist against secular, rich against poor, and city against countryside.
"Egypt is a state, not a square," some chanted.
"We reject the Ministry of Tahrir Square," a banner read.
'Silent majority'
"This is the first time the Party of the Couch has come down into the street," said Sayed Sameh, the 55-year-old owner of a workshop. "We are the silent majority."
Those sentiments were delivered less stridently in Shobra, a working-class neighborhood whose three million people outnumber the populations of some smaller Arab countries. Even on Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, its rhythm was one of perpetual motion, as sellers of grilled sweet potatoes hawked their fare beside cafes disgorging customers to the sidewalk.
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Protests continue in Egypt
A group of young men chatted on a side street, near a mural that celebrated the Jan. 25 Revolution, the favored name for the events that forced Mr. Mubarak from power. Near a pool of standing water, they complained of a reeling stock market, factories closing, chaos in the streets and the writ of the bultagiyya, slang for thugs. "No one agrees on what’s going on down there," said Wael Arabi, a 29-year-old construction foreman, pointing in the general direction of Tahrir Square.
The men lacked the impetuosity of the rally in Abassiya. One of them compared Mr. Mubarak to Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s de facto ruler — "the same language, but with a different face." Another hoped for the appearance of someone like Gamal Abdel Nasser, the authoritarian but populist leader who ruled Egypt until 1970. But together they captured the refrain that has made transitions so difficult in Syria, Libya and Yemen — the sense of the unknown after decades of grimly repressive rule. "People side with him because they’re scared," said Ahmed Afifi, a 30-year-old engineer and self-described pessimist. "They don’t know what’s going to happen next."
The military has stoked the flames of xenophobia, warning of plots against Egypt. Communiqué No. 85, issued this week, warned of those trying to sow chaos and, in what was essentially an appeal to vigilantism, urged people to hand over troublemakers to the authorities. Fear of spies, always a fixture here, seems especially pronounced these days. "All those people in Tahrir Square, they’re 15 or 16 years old," said Mohammed Nooh, a 57-year-old vendor, sitting along another street. "And they’re paid from abroad."
"We know what real revolutionaries look like," added his friend, Zaki Sabri.
Support in polls
Polls in Egypt have consistently shown formidable support for the military through the transition, and even the toughest youths hurling rocks at the police this week voiced their backing for the institution, often in the same breath that they ridiculed Field Marshal Tantawi as a puppet of Mr. Mubarak. The military seems so confident in that support that Field Marshal Tantawi offered this week, without providing much detail, to hold a referendum to determine whether it should keep ruling. In the words of one of his generals, "If the people came now and said give up power, we would be relieved."
The suggestion is that enough people believe that the military remains a bulwark against instability, and the sentiment echoes the man it seized power from. In February, more than a week before he stepped down, Mr. Mubarak warned that if he resigned, "There will be chaos." President Bashar al-Assad in Syria has said the same. So did Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya. The examples of those countries were mentioned at the rally in Abassiya, where a sign read, "Where are your principles and morals, Egyptians? The army of your country has never betrayed you."
"The people in Tahrir are trying to take us 10 steps back," said Marwa Hosny, 45, a homemaker. "They want to set this country aflame. I came down to the street for the first time because I realized our country is at threat of becoming like Libya or Syria. We already had our beautiful revolution, so let’s move forward!"
Dina Salah Amer contributed reporting.
This article, headlined "Egypt Military Wooing Public to Keep Power," first appeared in The New York Times.