Getting the real story in Cairo becomes a test of wills

Editor's note: Native Houstonian Victoria Harper is a Cairo-based consultant and writer who will periodically file reports from the scene of the ever-changing situation in Egypt. This is her first letter from Cairo.

Anyone who has seen the Cairo skyline can tell you that the most prominent features are minarets and satellite dishes. We get thousands of free-to-air channels, everything from raunchy porn to non-stop Koran. Independent Arabic-language news channels are geared to broadcast without censorship and they’re not fooling around.

Within days of being blocked from Egyptian airwaves, getting their offices trashed and having their reporters detained, Al Jazeera managed to switch frequencies and was back in our living rooms. Does the Ministry of Information really think it’s pulling the wool over our eyes?

Egyptians are traditionally mistrustful of the state-run TV because of its biased and ineffectual reporting. However, with the unprecedented epic unfolding before them, many looked to national television for reassurance. What they got instead were analysts reporting evidence of foreign conspiracies engineered to topple the government.

Some conservative parts of the population are willing to go along with this and remain dead set against the demonstrators. And some people will believe just about anything.

But those who had been on the fence now seem frustrated by the state’s televised scenes of calm bridges over a placid Nile in surreal contrast to the spectacular, in-your-face coverage of events by every other station in the world. Suspension of disbelief must have strained to the breaking point. I’m pretty sure someone made a joke about cognitive dissidents and da Nile.

The other shoe must have dropped because several high-profile TV presenters and media personalities resigned over the last few days, stating they could no longer tolerate the government-enforced “unprofessionalism."

And human rights groups are holding the minister of information responsible for the 300 protestor deaths, claiming that false allegations made on state TV incited the violent attackers.

We just found out that the new minister of culture resigned from the week-old cabinet for “health reasons." Maybe his friends at the demonstrations stopped talking to him.

Our biggest shocker was the interview that Omar Suleiman gave to the local press. Our long-anticipated vice president chose to throw his weight around instead of using his head, or his heart for that matter. In a nutshell, he said, “Egypt isn’t ready for democracy. It’s unethical to ask for the president to leave. He must be the one to lead the process of change.”

And then them fightin’ words, “The current situation cannot be allowed to continue for long. The only alternative to dialogue is coup.”

Many who were willing to give Suleiman the benefit of the doubt are now convinced that he is not acting in good faith. His attitude is clearly "my way or the highway’." Either we accept his willingness to speak with the opposition as proof that he is on the road to reform and stop demonstrating, or the military will step in.

Now that Suleiman has uttered the word "coup," roundtables of analysts and former generals are on TV discussing the military’s options. Few straight answers were offered, but we were able to surmise that the military will never use force against citizens, but it will referee if the state cannot hold the country together.

Various acts of civil disobedience have extended to cutting off major roads, stopping train services and burning down one of the governorates’ headquarters. And now the Tahrir Square protestors have branched out to obstruct the entrances to the cabinet and parliament buildings.

If this is the state holding the country together, I shudder to think what it might look like coming apart.