While the decision to reduce curfew hours reflects a feeling of success on the part of Egyptian authorities, the same decision is regarded by the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy as a sign of victory over perpetrators of the coup who, they say, were forced to ease their exceptional procedures.
In its 77th statement, the alliance said the reduction of curfew hours is another sign of Egyptians' perseverance who are using novel protest mechanisms that involve horizontal geographical expansion whereby protests are staged across the whole of Egypt.
The alliance wants to make an unmistakable crisis appear to be a blessing, which is typical of extremist Islamist literature. Today, most of the alliance members who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood are detained, and those who remain outside are unable to communicate with those members lest their communications are detected by authorities.
After the failure of a week of protests they dubbed "the week of departure," the alliance is calling this week "the people lead the revolution" and is saying all sectors of the Egyptian society will take part in it. They claim this is a sign that the coup is losing more ground every day as it rears its ugly head and undermines the gains of the 25 January 2011 revolution.
Observers, however, say the protests organised by the alliance over the past two days were small in number compared to the ones before and were also less organized. This, they say, shows that the people are less interested. This apathy is attributed to tighter security measures, the orientation of the media, or the conviction that those protests will undermine the state.
The alliance has tried to escape the grip of security by protesting on the peripheries of Cairo and Giza or staging small protests at strategic places with no reliance on sit-ins which have been quelled by authorities.
The alliance's statement gives the impression that the number of protesters who took to the streets on Saturday were in the millions.
In its daily statements, the alliance talks about victory being the result of patience and claims that perpetrators of the coup are only a step away from being annihilated. These claims are reminiscent of countries which are losing at war but claim to be making progress and destroying the enemy.
The alliance claims that creative forms of protest that involve forming human chains, car and motorbike marches and pot-banging provide evidence that the people are leading the protests against the oppressive coup.
The Brotherhood seems to be stuck, for neither is it capable of entering into negotiations and reaching agreement with the political leadership– most of its leaders being arrested or pursued– nor is it capable of continuing protests as the numbers of its supporters continue to shrink.
The fact that the alliance is still capable of organizing protests here and there despite the crackdown by security since the dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adaweya and Nahda protesters. The inability of top leaders to meet up to coordinate action may be, however, considered a sign of success. The alliance may have given orders to its supporters to protest to act in a decentralized fashion.
