There is an amazing amount of crap and misinformation in the MSM and of course on DU (Which actually is a stand-alone crap and misinformation generator). Despite all the bad-mouthing of Mubarak, his government kept a lid on the radicalism, which aside from any idealistic motivations was just bad for business, since Egypt doesn't have a lot to offer except tourism and transit fees for the Canal; his government used an awful lot of what they did take in for energy and food price supports.
Corrupt? Oh Hell yes, but by our standards everything outside of North-of-the-Rio-Grande-North-America plus most of Western Europe is just as corrupt, Egypt was not exceptional in that regard.
What got people in the streets was not mostly an undying thirst for democracy, it was the fact that despite the price supports their economy sucked so bad that they were still getting hammered between terrible employment and rising prices of basic necessities. There isn't a ****ing thing that a 'Democratically elected free government' is likely to do for them (Before being swallowed by the MB within five years) that has any real chance of changing that for the better, and a lot of prospects to make it worse. In happier times the Western governments might prop up a new regime with mad-money loans (Which would still go largely into corruption, third-world democratic governments are even more corrupt than third-world dictatorships), but not much of anybody is in a position to dump a few billion dollars of international loans into Egypt right now.
There is no direct connection between democracy and prosperity. Look at China. It was a thirst for prosperity that got most of those guys in the streets in Cairo, and the fact that Mubarak was failing to provide it. I don't see any underlying factors that are going to turn the economy of Egypt around just because they go to an improved electoral government, even assuming it survives long enough to be taken seriously.
