As Egyptians poured onto the streets on Tuesday to demand he go, President Hosni Mubarak had already given more ground in a week than ever before in his 30 years in power. His abdication seems to have already begun.
For a man dubbed "The Pharaoh", it is an end of historic proportions. Some recalled the coup of 1952 which killed off Egypt's royal dynasty and urged Mubarak to get on with quitting.
"King Farouk never allowed any of this to happen in this country. He left without leaving havoc," said Cairo shopkeeper Maamoun Saleh, who compared Mubarak to the monarch whose overthrow by the army ushered in the present political system.
"The country is being ruined and he is still there," the 45-year-old Saleh said. "Let him go. The people want him to go."
An uncertain future awaits the 82-year-old leader, who just a week ago seemed confident of either unchallenged re-election in September, or of handing over to his businessman son. But huge uncertainty now awaits 80 million Egyptians, their neighbours, Western powers and Mubarak's fellow Arab autocrats.
Protesters among perhaps a million on the streets said he should face prosecution and retribution for years of repression, corruption, mismanagement of wealth and police brutality.
"He and his ministers should be put on trial. They should not leave unpunished for the wealth they stole," said Mursi Imaeeddine, a vegetable vendor in the slum city of Imbaba. "He starved the people. People are suffering from his policies."
Mubarak, knocked off balance by an unprecedented revolt that was inspired by the overthrow last month of Tunisia's veteran strongman, has turned to his new vice-president, Omar Suleiman. He has asked him to open a dialogue with all political parties — the sort of opening that he spent three decades eschewing.
His opponents say it is too little, too late to save him.
"Our first demand is that Mubarak go. Only after that can dialogue start with the military establishment on the details of a peaceful transition of power," said Mohamed el-Beltagi, a leader of the mass Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood.
Liberal figurehead Mohamed ElBaradei, a retired U.N. diplomat, said: "I hope to see Egypt peaceful and that's going to require as a first step the departure of President Mubarak."
AFTER MUBARAK?
But the next steps are unclear. How they proceed will answer some key questions: Can Egyptians work together for change or might the most populous Arab state descend into anarchy and civil war? Will the Islamists, long the voice of the oppressed, overturn long-standing alliances with the West and with Israel?
In three decades, Mubarak failed to create an institutional framework for democratic transition, complicating an orderly transfer of power. His opponents sense their time has come.
The opposition, ranging from young secular dissidents to the Muslim Brotherhood, want not just him but his ruling elite out. They want parliament dissolved and bans lifted on opposition parties, as well as rapid, free elections.
But when, rather than if, Mubarak does go, the alternatives provide plenty of fuel for worry. Systematic repression has weakened all mainstream parties other than the ruling NDP.
To surmount this institutional fragility and avoid opening a vacuum, the broad-based national movement for change led by ElBaradei is calling for a transitional government.
Under discussion is a "board of trustees" comprising Vice President Suleiman, Sami Anan, the chief-of-staff of the armed forces, ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear agency, and Ahmed Zeweil, a Nobel chemistry prize-winner.
For three months, this group would amend the constitution to ensure free elections. The government then elected would have a two-year interim mandate, ElBaradei's organisation said.
That plan looks tentative, however. While the views of Egypt's silent majority are hard to gauge, the two forces best placed to fill any vacuum are the military and the Brotherhood.
Either option will alarm the rulers of neighbouring countries, as well as the United States, which gives the Egyptian army about $1 billion a year and regards Egypt as a linchpin of stability and Western influence in the region.
U.S. President Barack Obama faces comparisons with his predecessor Jimmy Carter, who abandoned the Shah to an Islamic revolution when Iranians revolted in 1979 against years of U.S.-funded oppression. Foreign policy setbacks damaged Carter, who was voted out in 1980. Obama faces re-election next year.
WESTERN DILEMMA
Washington has called for a free election, but also insists it will not tolerate power going to those who would then stifle democracy — in other words it wants to avoid another Iran.
Free elections in Egypt could usher in the Brotherhood, many analysts say. The movement says it would preserve democracy, but Western powers would take some convincing. Free elections in the Middle East have a history of perplexing them. Algerians and Palestinians, in 1991 and 2006, voted for Islamist majorities but then saw international opposition to them, and civil war.
John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi, said investors would scarcely welcome a U.S. drive for democracy that could bring the Brotherhood to power.
"They should be careful what they wish for," he said. "If they push for free elections, then the Muslim Brotherhood may come to power."
"If Mubarak goes what is the option? Are we going to have the Brotherhood in power running government, which will have policies with anti-Western and anti-Israeli aspirations?
"That would be a page turner for international investors."
Given that anxiety in the West — which is amplified in Israel — some analysts believe the army is seeking a face-saving way to have Mubarak leave in a way that preserves the prestige, and influence, of the military establishment.
Some cite as a model late 20th-century Turkey, where the army stood in the background as a guarantor of the secular constitution in what was otherwise an open parliamentary system.
But many of the 80 million Egyptians are impatient for change, and have huge aspirations for better economic times.
The explosion of protests has uncovered the fury of young Egyptians who have grown up in the age of information revolution but have faced political, economic and social degradation.
Mubarak's governments have failed to keep pace economically with a demographic bulge, denying the growing ranks of the young both freedom and the prospect of decent education and jobs.
Economic growth of up to 7 percent a year has not trickled down to the poor. Torture and rape have been used routinely in police stations to intimidate and suppress dissent.
That adds up to enormous pressure from the Egyptian street to bring change and bring it quickly — a tall order for any government, let alone one picking up the pieces after Mubarak.
As other Middle East autocrats now wonder anxiously about a domino effect spreading from Tunis and Cairo, the pace of events may quicken yet, however long Mubarak hesitates at the exit.
