No sooner had Egypt's supreme leader, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, finished his televised address offering to speed up the country's transition to civilian rule, when the crowd of more than 100,000 protesters filling Tahrir Square let him know his offer fell well short of their demands.
" Erhal, erhal, erhal," the crowd chanted as the military commander's speech ended, meaning, "leave, leave, leave." For four days, tens of thousands of protesters have flocked to the square in the centre of Cairo, calling for Field Marshal Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to hand over power to a civilian authority.
"There's nothing new here," said Walid Mamdu, a 51-year-old owner of a car rental company. "He's sounding just like [Hosni]Mubarak," Mr. Mamdu said, vowing to return to the square every day until the SCAF gives up power.
Anticipating just such a reaction, Field Marshal Tantawi had included in his remarks a threat to take his case directly to the Egyptian people in the form of a referendum. He challenged the protesters of Tahrir Square to put down their rocks and firebombs and proceed to parliamentary elections set to begin on Monday.
Many have battled with riot police on the southeast fringes of the square in front of the country's Interior Ministry. The militants blame the SCAF, its appointed government and especially the Interior Ministry for using brutal violence in dealing with unarmed protesters, setting off a four-day frenzy of clashes.
In a rare televised appearance, the taciturn Field Marshal Tantawi assured the Egyptian people that the armed forces "do not covet power," but for the sake of an orderly transition will continue to act as the country's executive until a new president is elected.
Even so, he said "the armed forces are ready to give up power immediately if the people wanted that [and expressed it]through a national referendum if it was necessary."
In a concession to the protesters, the Field Marshal did, however, advance the date of the presidential election by six months, to June of 2012, and vowed the military would return to their barracks by July 1.
He also announced that the SCAF had accepted the resignation of the current nine-month-old government, and that a new government would be announced shortly.
In any event, and contrary to what many people had thought, he said elections would commence as planned on Monday, with voting in Cairo, Alexandria, Assiut and Luxor. The rest of Egypt will cast ballots in two subsequent rounds of voting.
Critics of the SCAF mostly cite its disregard for human rights during the nine months since taking over the executive from Mr. Mubarak, the ousted president. They point to the thousands of bloggers and activists put on trial in military courts and the flagrant assaults on unarmed protesters this past weekend.
The assaults, shown repeatedly on television available in Egypt, include random beatings, an injured woman being dragged by the hair across the road, and the dumping of a dead protester's body in a pile of garbage.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said a disgusted pharmacist, who would give only her first name, Heba. "This has to stop, and the only way to do that is by getting these people out of power."
"I agree the scenes of brutality are heartbreaking," said Hisham Kassem, the former head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. But the assaults "are not sufficient reason to derail the orderly transition to elected civilian authority."
"These people in Tahrir do not represent the people of Egypt," or even the 25 million expected to vote, he said.
"If the army did put this to a referendum, it would win overwhelmingly," he added.
The important thing is that the elections proceed, said Mr. Kassem, the founding publisher of Egypt's only independent newspaper, Al Masry al Youm. "If the elections were cancelled, Egypt would be like a spaceship floating in space, not sure where it was going to land."
Field Marshal Tantawi delivered his message fresh from a lengthy meeting with leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties. The parties were reported to have endorsed the military commander's remarks and are urging their followers to do the same.
The Muslim Brotherhood in particular is against any delay in voting, not wanting to lose the political edge it enjoys by having had a sophisticated organization in the field preparing for years for just such an opportunity as this election.
The Islamist group, and its Freedom and Justice Party, did not endorse Tuesday's "million-man" protest against the government, fearing it might be so large as to counter the SCAF's plan to hold elections as planned next week. The strategy may well have backfired.
"The Brotherhood lost a lot of support this weekend," Mr. Kassem said. First, by frightening a lot of people on Friday when its peaceful protest against absolute military supremacy included a number of strident religious messages; and second, by its refusal to support the protest on Tuesday.
"They were revealed to care only about their political fortunes, not about the people," said an organizer for presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who broke away this year from the Brotherhood because of its heavy-handed leadership.