Egypt’s Prime Minister replaced

Ahmed Shafiq has resigned and been replaced by Essam Sharaf, an engineer who used to be Transportation Minister. I was just in a meeting with a dozen Egyptian colleagues, all of whom stated their great liking for Sharaf. This sounds promising. Better yet, he was pro-revolution from early on:

“Essam Sharaf has been charged by the supreme council with forming the new cabinet. Sharaf was one of a handfull of ex-ministers who declared their support for the revolution in its early days, and is said to have joined the protesters in Tahrir Square days before ex-president Mubarak stepped down. A professor of engineering who served under Mubarak from 2004-2006, Sharaf is well respected among the Egyptian public. He has been a vocal opponent of the Mubarak regime since leaving office and has been especially critical of the collapse of public transport under the former president.”

Kudos to Egypt. This sounds like a great appointment that will be well-received among the public. Most likely it was done today in part to minimize tomorrow’s planned demonstrations, which were to have the resignation of Shafiq near the top of their list of demands.

Essam Sharaf:

Our Provost just dropped by my office. Our Provost is an engineer as well, knows Sharaf personally, and has nothing but good things to say about him. He says he was too honest to serve in the Cabinet, and that’s why he was forced out in 2006. So, Egypt has “Honest Jim” in charge now, and he will be allowed to form a new Cabinet to take us through the first real elections, whenever those are held.

Luckily, the pattern so far does seem to be that the army will respond to protestors’ demands, but perhaps a bit slowly.

In other news, Mubarak will apparently be questioned by the prosecutor-general– in Cairo. Pretty gutsy to bring him back to Cairo when he was the unrepentant President just three weeks ago. He’s going to need good security, I would think.