Is the long wait over?

Is the long wait over?

by J.D. | LONDON

FOR some background to the unrest sweeping through Egypt, you might want to look at our special report on Egypt, published six months ago. In it, Max Rodenbeck, The Economist's Middle East correspondent, argued that after 30 years of economic progress but political paralysis, change was in the air. The report chronicles the economic hardships that most Egyptians endure on a daily basis, the way a rotten education system lets them down, and the elaborate charade that is elections in Egypt. It also points out that despite concerns in the West that democracy might bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power, a fear encouraged by Egypt's government which has long set itself up as a bulwark against Islamism, the religious wave that swept the country in the 1970s no longer has the revolutionary power it did then. At the end, the report ponders what might come after the end of Mr Mubarak's reign. That question might be answered sooner than anyone thought.