Better cry for Cairo

You may think you are watching the struggle for freedom and democracy in Egypt as ordinary Egyptians take to the street in the hopes of shedding the shackles of an oppressive dictator – and it might have even started that way - but now, it has come to a showdown between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hosni Mubarak. NY Times

CAIRO — Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood and the secular opposition banded together Sunday around a prominent government critic to negotiate for forces seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, as the army struggled to hold a capital seized by fears of chaos and buoyed by euphoria that three decades of Mr. Mubarak’s rule may be coming to an end.

The announcement that the critic, Mohamed ElBaradei, would represent a loosely unified opposition reconfigured the struggle between Mr. Mubarak’s government and a six-day-old uprising bent on driving him and his party from power.

Though lacking deep support on his own, Dr. ElBaradei, a Nobel laureate and diplomat, could serve as a consensus figure for a movement that has struggled to articulate a program for a potential transition. It suggested, too, that the opposition was aware of the uprising’s image abroad, putting forth a candidate who might be more acceptable to the West than beloved in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood just bought themselves a public secular face as a beard. And for those of you with little short term memory – let point out that it was during Dr. El Baradei’s watch at the International Atomic Energy Agency that the Iranians got away with creating a second parallel but ‘unmonitored’ nuclear program.

crossposted at the Last Exile