The Mahalla workers, on 17 February 2008, were the first to put forward the demand, for raising the national minimum wage to LE1,200 per month, after it stagnated at LE35 per month since 1984. Nazif’s neoliberal cabinet only raised it to LE400 last year.

Following the uprising, Essam Sharaf’s cabinet had announced it’d raise the minimum wage to only LE700, despite condemnations from labor groups and NGOs. But shockingly now the military junta has officially endorsed the new government budget whereby the national minimum wage had been further reduced to LE684, with more austerity measures taken…

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawy, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), has endorsed the 2011/2012 state budget after it was amended and approved by the cabinet.
The total budget expenditure was amended from LE515 billion to LE491 billion, of which 54 percent would be directed to social projects.
The minimum wage was reduced from LE700 to LE684 per month as of July, with an annual total of LE9 billion to be paid in wages for two million government employees.
Expenditure on education decreased from LE55 billion to LE 52 billion, health from LE24 billion to LE23.8 billion, and housing from LE21 billion to LE16.7 billion.

Hossam el-Hamalawy is used to being in trouble with the authorities. State security hauled him in three times for his activism when Hosni Mubarak was in power. He hoped Egypt’s uprising would end such summonses. It didn’t.
He was called in again in May for questioning. But one element changed. It wasn’t internal security but an army general who wanted to question the blogger over accusations he made on television about abuses by the military police.
“We didn’t have this revolution … so that we would replace Hosni Mubarak with the military as a taboo,” said Hamalawy, insisting that the army must change its ways.
“The military institution is part of the old regime,” he said. “It will have to go through its own change in revolutionary Egypt.”
Quite what that change might look like is perhaps the biggest question facing Egyptians now.
The army has vowed to hand power to civilians, after it took took control when Mubarak was ousted on Feb. 11.
Few doubt it wants to quit the grimy world of day-to-day government but, at the same time, few expect the generals to submit to civilian command when they return to barracks.
Instead, analysts say the military is likely to slip into the political shadows, as a protector of national security — a broad brief that would allow some back-seat intervention — and rigorously guard its business interests and other privileges.
The military has after all supplied Egypt’s rulers, including former air force commander Mubarak, for six decades.
“I do feel they are sincere about handing over power to a civilian government,” said Hamalawy, who writes the arabawy.org blog. “But that does not mean they will give up … their role in the Egypt political arena.”
After summons for interrogation prompted protests, Hamalawy said the general who quizzed him on May 31 promised to examine evidence he provided of any abuses by the military police.

Above is Chapter IV of the MA Thesis I wrote 10 years ago, when studying at the American University in Cairo’s Political Science department. This chapter discusses the revival of the student movement following the 1967 defeat. Of course reading it today I wish if I would have edited some parts, changed the lingo here and there, and added more resources and info I’ve been learning over the past years… But in general I still think the thesis stands, and could help shed some light on this critical period in the history of the left in Egypt…