The situation in Egypt, as a friend from Alexandria described it to me in an email this morning, is "quite fluid and extremely scary". It's also very difficult to work out what is really going on behind the scenes.

Vice-President Suleiman increasingly behaves as if he were president, while the president himself, fading from view but not resigning, continues to haunt the scene as a ghost behind the curtains.

In some areas the Mubarak regime appears (repeat: appears) to be retreating step by step – as seen from the resignations yesterday of the president's son, Gamal, and other senior figures in the ruling party.

While the street protests are being tolerated, probably in the hope that the demonstrators will eventually wear themselves out, the old repressive tactics – arrests and so on – continue in the background. In the words of my friend's email, "The witch hunt has already started."

None of this suggests the emerging "transitional" leaders are committed to rapid and meaningful change, that they will do anything other than drag their feet all the way to the scheduled presidential election in September, or that they will not attempt to retrench if given half a chance.

Then there is the United States, which still seems to be dithering over whether Mubarak should stay or go and, if so, how soon he should go. The danger is that the Obama administration will get too deeply involved and end up hindering rather than helping. In the words of an Egyptian woman quoted by the Guardian yesterday:

"If Obama gets rid of Mubarak, you will see that many people in Egypt will love America. If Obama leaves it to the Egyptian people, we will love him. But if Obama tries to force us to have a government we don't want, it will be different. We will win and then we will judge Obama by what he does and take decisions according to how he behaves."

Meanwhile, there are various legal/constitutional obstacles blocking the way forward politically. This is not surprising because the legal framework was constructed to keep the regime in power and prevent it from being easily dismantled.

Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights explain the problems in detail in an article for the Washington Post.

The big question is how to ensure that the coming presidential election is conducted freely and fairly, and without the customary repression in the run-up to it. Whatever moves are made between now and September should be directed towards that goal. But at present I can't see it happening without continued pressure from the streets.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 6 Feb 2011.