Is History Repeating Itself?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside,PEI] Journal-Pioneer

He fled Cairo in a hurry, taking 204 trunks with him into exile. But he left behind in his palace vaults six huge safes. As reported by Time magazine, one contained a fabulous collection of coins, another was packed tight with paper money, and a third contained a stamp collection worth millions of dollars.

A windowless hideaway between the first and second floors was the “treasury,” with box after box of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and platinum brooches.

He would often travel to Europe for grand shopping sprees, earning the ire of his subjects.Towards the end of his reign, he was widely condemned for his corrupt and ineffectual government. He was finally overthrown by a group of young military officers who named themselves the “Free Officers Movement.”

No, I’m not talking about Hosni Mubarak, nor did this take place in 2011. The man who hastily departed Egypt on July 26, 1952, was the country’s last monarch, the corpulent gambler King Farouk.

On the throne since 1936, Farouk by the early 1950s was widely resented by Egypt’s increasingly impoverished masses. He was also seen as a puppet of the British, who still retained major influence in the country and also controlled the Suez Canal.

On Jan. 25, 1952, British forces posted along the Suez Canal had a major confrontation with the police force of Ismailia, resulting in the deaths of forty Egyptian policemen. The next day, protesters roamed the streets of Cairo attacking foreign and pro-British Egyptian establishments.

Discontent continued to grow, and on July 23, 1952, Farouk’s kingdom ceased to exist, overthrown in a coup led by Colonel Gamel Abdel Nasser.

A republic was proclaimed and massive economic reforms, including distribution of land from absentee landlords to poor peasants, followed. Egypt also gained complete control over the Suez Canal after 1956.

But Egypt did not become a democracy. President Nasser died in 1970 and his successor, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated by Islamic extremists in 1981. Sadat’s vice-president and former commander of the Egyptian Air Force, Hosni Mubarak, assumed power.

During his lengthy tenure as president, Mubarak grew increasingly autocratic: fixed elections, the imprisonment of political dissidents without trial, and the use of draconian “emergency powers” to ban demonstrations and other activities deemed harmful to his rule, became standard operating procedure for his regime.

All of this has led to the present explosion. Is history repeating itself, and will the army again intervene to remove an unpopular ruler? Will the dictatorial “president-monarch” Hosni Mubarak, like Farouk 59 years ago, soon be driven out of Egypt?