HOSNI MUBARAK was supposed to announce his resignation Thursday. The Egyptian military expected it. The new head of his ruling party pleaded to him face-to-face to do it. But despite more than two weeks of massive demonstrations by protesters unmoved by lesser concessions, the president still didn’t get it.

    Mubarak’s top aides and family — including his son Gamal, widely viewed as his intended successor — told him he could still ride out the turmoil. So the televised resignation speech the rest of Egypt had expected became a stubborn effort to cling to power. It only enraged protesters. On Friday, the military moved decisively.

    A senior government official said Mubarak lacked the political machinery that could give him sound advice about what was happening in the country.

    “He did not look beyond what Gamal was telling him, so he was isolated politically,” said the official.

    The military, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly impatient with the failure of Mubarak and Omar Suleiman, his newly appointed vice president, to end the protests. The unrest spiraled out of control Thursday and Friday, with demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins and even gunbattles engulfing almost the entire nation.

    Insiders said it was the military that persuaded Mubarak to appoint Suleiman as vice president — the first since Mubarak took office in 1981 — and place him in charge of negotiations with opposition groups on a way out of the standoff.

    By Thursday, nearly everyone had expected Mubarak to resign, including the military.

    Insiders said Mubarak’s address Thursday night was meant to be his resignation announcement. Instead, he made one last desperate attempt to stay in office after being encouraged to do so by close aides and especially by his family, long the subject of rumors of corruption, abuse of power and extensive wealth.

    One insider said Gamal, his banker-turned-politician son, rewrote the speech several times before the recording. It was aired at 11 p.m., several hours after state TV said Mubarak was about to address the nation. It showed brief footage of him meeting with Suleiman and his Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq.

    The address was clearly prepared in a rush. It had rough cuts, and Mubarak was caught at least once acting like he was between takes, fixing his tie and looking away from the camera.

    Mubarak said in the address that he was handing over most of his powers to Suleiman but again rejected calls for his resignation. He vowed to introduce genuine reforms, prosecute those behind the violence that left scores of protesters dead and offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

    He said he was hurting over calls for his removal and, in his defense, recounted his record in public service. He was not going anywhere until his term ended in September, he said.

    He had hoped that putting Suleiman in charge would end the protests and allow him to remain in office as a symbolic figure, a scenario that would have seen him make a dignified exit.

    The address betrayed what many Egyptians suspected for years — Mubarak was out of touch with the people.

    The insiders differ on whether Mubarak’s address that night was made with the consent of the military, whether it represented his last chance to take back control of the streets. Even if the military’s patience wasn’t exhausted by the speech, it ran out as the protests grew more intense.

    On Friday, the military allowed protesters to gather outside Mubarak’s presidential palace in a Cairo suburb — but by that time Mubarak and his immediate family had already flown to another palace in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

    By early afternoon, millions were out on the streets in Cairo, the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and a string of other major cities. The crowd outside his palace was rapidly growing. Only a few meters and four army tanks separated the protesters from the gate.

    Suleiman, Mubarak’s longtime confidant and a former intelligence chief, announced that Mubarak was stepping down. In a two-sentence statement to state television that took 49 seconds, Egypt’s history changed forever.

    (SD-Agencies)