CAIRO, Egypt – The protest against President Hosni Mubarak and his ruling party just got bigger.
Thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched to the steps of Egypt’s parliament late on Tuesday, bypassing a cordon of tanks preventing their movement from Tahrir Square, Cairo’s city center, according to GlobalPost Cairo correspondent Jon Jensen.
Armed personnel carriers and soldiers from Egypt’s military were quick to regroup, setting security lines around the newly formed protest, Jensen wrote late Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have demanded the ouster of Mubarak for the past two weeks, largely by occupying the streets around Tahrir Square.
Although the protesters have received numerous concessions from the 30-year-old regime, many of which would never have been unimaginable just one month ago, some in Tahrir wanted to make their presence felt in more locations across the city.
“We though it might be getting a little unproductive, just staying in Tahrir,” said Ahmed Mahmoud, 29, sitting on a curb in front of Egypt’s Magles es-Shaab, the lower house of parliament. “Now our voices will be heard more.”
The newly expanded boundaries containing Egypt’s unrest is a sign that many protesters are also challenging Mubarak’s ruling bloc, the National Democratic Party.
One young man waved a sign outside parliament that read “National Deception Party.”
The street outside Egypt’s legislature was home to months of economic protests over unemployment and wages last year, before being dispersed by the country’s vast security services.
Protesters were buoyed by the release Monday of Wael Ghonim, a cyber activist and Google executive.
Demonstrators have set up in makeshift tents in Tahrir Square in Cairo and are refusing to leave until their demands are met — chiefly that Hosni Mubarak end his 30-year rule immediately.
In a new concession, the government on Monday announced a 15 percent hike in state administrative employee wages and military and civilian pensions beginning in April.
But the so-called pro-democracy camp in the Egyptian capital said the government had conceded little ground in trying to end the crisis.
"[The pay rise] doesn't mean anything," Sherif Zein, a protester at Tahrir Square, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. "Maybe it will be a short-term release for the workers ... but most of the people will realize what this is, it's just a tablet of asprin, but it's nothing meaningful."
Protesters have consistently demanded that Mubarak resign, but his announcements to date indicate no intention to leave office until September, when his term expires.
Omar Suleiman, the country's newly appointed vice president, announced on Tuesday that Mubarak would set up a committee that would carry out constitutional and legislative amendments to enable a shift of power.
Mubarak went publicly about government business Monday, meeting with his new cabinet for the first time, with the vice president, the speaker of parliament and the head of the appeals court.
The minister of finance, in an apparent effort to shore up public support for the regime, authorized the special bonus of 15 percent on salaries and pensions for government employees.
Monday evening brought a large influx of people to Tahrir Square, where there was a large communal sunset prayer, after which people congregated around one of three loudspeakers and listened to poets, folk singers, comics and soapbox political speeches.
Some joined the protest for the first time, saying they had been inspired in part by the release of Google executive Wael Ghonim, a Google senior executive who was responsible for setting up the Facebook page that mobilized the start of the protests, after what he said was two weeks of detention by state security authorities.
"I came here for the first time today because this cabinet is a failure, Mubarak is still meeting the same ugly faces ... he can't believe it is over. He is a very stubborn man," Afaf Naged, 71, a former member of the board of directors of the state-owned National Bank of Egypt, told Reuters.
"I am also here because of Wael Ghonim. He was right when he said that the NDP is finished. There is no party left, but they don't want to admit it," she said, of Egypt's ruling party.
Amr Fatouh, 25, a surgeon, said it was his first time protesting at the square because of his hospital duties.
"I hope people will continue and more people will come. At first, people didn't believe the regime would fall but that is changing," he said.
Al Jazeera called the release of Ghonim "highly significant" and said it "could certainly push big numbers into this protest later on."
"Protesters say [Ghonim] is potentially some sort of figurehead for them ... they have been looking for a leader," an Al Jazeera correspondent in Cairo said.
