mubarak. mubar mubarak. who do you think should be the next president of egypt? anyone who the people here look to him. we have to have elections. we have to have democracy. our rights. we have no rights here in egypt before. but i think from this square, tahrir square, that freedom and justice and liberation and social reform? yes, all things come the first time. so are you sure that today hosni mubarak will go? hosni mubarak will go. but leave egypt. leave egypt egyptians.
anderson, i can only imagine, i can only anticipate what that crowd would do if mubarak goes on television shortly and comes up with some sort of story explaining why he s staying as president and until the scheduled elections in september. let s look what s just happened in the last couple days. earlier this week, the biggest protests we ve seen in more than two weeks. and just yesterday, we saw the protests growing to areas outside the parliament, outside the health ministry i believe. not just in the square but other areas nearby. we heard of strikes taking place in various places around the country. so the momentum is growing for the protesters. if mubarak does not satisfy their demands tonight on television, if he comes up short in his statements, this is only going to mobilize them all the more. i mean, this thing is building and building and building. momentum is on their side. it seems as if the power now has
there s no doubt there will be an explosion i think it s fair to say, an explosion of anger if in fact mubarak goes on television in the coming minutes and announces he s not stepping down. these folks who are dancing in the streets right now, they re chanting and they ve got the music going. they will be so angry, and i suspect folks all over egypt, this is a huge country of 80 million people. the anger level will just be huge right there. fred pleitgen is our correspondent. he s inside the square right now. i believe he s the only network television reporter who s reporting from tahrir square from on the ground right now. i want to remind viewers about 90 minutes or so ago, the president of the united states barack obama spoke and if you read between the lines of what president obama said, it sounds like it was all over. america will do everything to help an orderly and genuine transition to democracy in egypt. president obama said this is a moment of transformation, that
leaving. reporter: no, he didn t say that, wolf. he set that he had del grated some of the presidential powers to the vice president omare suleiman, but let s keep in mind that it was only the 29th of january when he appointed suleiman as the vice president. therefore naturally he will have some of those powers. what we heard was a president speaking in the first person as the president, saying i will do this, i will do that, i will form committees, i have instruct instructed there was no hit whatsoever that he has in any way decided to relinquish most of his powers as the president. that would explain why you are hearing this incredible uproar down in the square. clearly he came nowhere near satisfies the demands of the people. if anything, he s enraged them move.
states handled this up to this point. as you can see, those messages that the obama administration has been sending so far this evening and the past couple days is something that was noted here on tahrir square among people. we have to note again and again who have been camping out here for a very long time but still have access 0 communication and know exactly what s going on. when the protester says we want our money back from president mubarak, he was talking to the reports that mubarak has amass the a fortune up to $27 billion. we just got a tweet from the mohamed elbaradei, the former head of the atomic energy agency. the nobel prize winner. i am closely following the situation. we are almost there. that s a tweet from muhammad elbaradei. fred, anderson has a question he wants to ask you. anderson, go ahead. fred, how will the people in the square hear the news?