Egypt: Buyer's Remorse over Morsi

A little over a year ago today, millions of Egyptians voted for Mohamed Morsi, in spite of severe misgivings about the man and his Muslim Brotherhood, because they could not in good conscience vote for his Mubarak-redux opponent, General Shafiq. They reasoned that the devil you don’t know is better than the devil you do, and they gave the new president a chance, although Morsi, a pinch-hitter candidate brought in by the Brotherhood at the last minute when the party boss was disqualified, lacked stature or charisma for the job. In the year since he was elected, many of those who cast reluctant ballots for him have had time to suffer severe buyer’s remorse, and today they cheered his ouster. 

That explains the paradox that bemuses Western media observers: why 22 million Egyptians signed a petition withdrawing confidence from Morsi only a year into his administration, and why millions thronged the streets for the better part of a week calling for his departure, and why they cheered wildly when the military staged a bloodless coup to oust the first democratically-elected president in Egyptian history. The Morsi administration has not only proved disastrously inept, it has also turned out to be insular, divisive, and shockingly power-hungry. He acted, not as a president for all Egyptians, but as if his mandate came from the Muslim Brotherhood alone. He put himself above the law while he forced through an overnight constitution, against massive opposition; and rigged Parliament to consolidate a permanent majority for his Muslim Brotherhood party. He was kicking away the ladder that brought him to power, oblivious to the evidence that millions of Egyptians, who found his ideology repugnant but had nevertheless entrusted him with their votes, were feeling betrayed.

And Egypt- that majority of Egyptians, those who voted for him reluctantly a year ago and those who voted against him- Egypt today clamored for an annulment from its commitment to the Muslim Brotherhood administration. If the January 25^th Revolution was a long-drawn, painful, bittersweet divorce from the Mubarak regime after a long marriage that had seen happier days, the June 30^th Rebellion was a visceral rejection of a regrettable mistake, a correction in direction: an annulment.

That the annulment had to come at the hands of the military is worrying to many who wonder if this will be back to the future. The sight of armored tanks on the streets is less reassuring than it was during the days of innocence of the January 25^th revolution, before the SCAF abused its powers during eighteen months of rule. The sight of white-uniformed police being hoisted above the crowd and hailed by demonstrators is even more disturbing to a nation who remembers the abusive, loathsome role the police and security forces played under Mubarak and the brutality with which they repressed the revolution of 2011.

Those who warn of a back to the future scenario might think of another analogy: in Muslim religious law, if a man divorces his wife three times, he may not take her back, even if it is their joint wish, before she has married another husband in the interim. The name for this intermediate husband who makes the remarriage of the divorced couple legal is a ‘legitimizer’; the brief one-year Morsi regime may be regarded as having played the role of ‘legitimizer’ that allows Egypt to go back to its military-backed autocracy.

But the ‘legitimizer’ regime may not go quietly. To the Muslim Brotherhood and their considerable base around the country, this defeat is bitter, and extremists among them may be plotting insurrection and violence. That would be a mistake, just as it would be a mistake by the newly-triumphant, liberal, secular majority of the country to try to shut the Islamists out of the democratic process in future elections. The Brotherhood was not ready to rule in June of 2012, but Islamist parties are entitled to have a voice in the politics of Egypt, as long as they respect the spirit and not just the letter of the democratic process.   

To those who mutter that Egypt is only jumping out of the frying pan of Islamist misrule into the fire of military dictatorship, that Egypt can only be ruled by a strongman, perhaps the answer is this: we don’t need another hero. Whoever comes to power in Egypt at the next election or whoever make seek to take advantage of the military's role as kingmaker, will have to deal with a new reality: the masses of Egypt have found their way out of the thunder-dome, not once but twice, and will find their way out again if need be. The people have spoken, and their voice may be loud, chaotic, and divided, but above all, it will not be silenced.

Chronicle of a Coup Foretold: Egypt's Millions Rebel

Whatever the outcome, history will record that June 30^th not only lived up to its hype but wildly exceeded it. As Egypt’s millions marched into the streets and the squares of every major city in the land on Sunday, stunned observers estimated that the human tide blackening every public space represented the largest demonstrations in history.

The most powerful grievance against the Morsi regime seem to stem from the sense of betrayal expressed repeatedly by the protesters from all walks of life. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood came to power not through ordinary elections- their specious claim to legitimacy- but through an extraordinary revolution for which hundreds of martyrs sacrificed their lives. The Islamists who had not sacrificed for the revolution reaped its fruit, and then they proceeded to betray the sacred trust handed to them by the Egyptian people. Instead of ruling for the good of Egypt and all Egyptians, the Morsi administration in its first year in office pursued a single-minded agenda of concentrating power in the hands of Islamist cronies, sidelining the opposition, emasculating the judiciary, and ramrodding through a controversial constitution.  It ignored the crashing economy and alarming insecurity that afflicted citizens at large while trying to impose a regressive, sectarian ideology that resonated with few outside of its base.

The blatant disconnect between the Morsi administration and public opinion is highlighted, during the current demonstrations, by Brotherhood supporters’ choice of green flags and bandanas with ‘Islamic’ slogans, while the opposition waved Egyptian flags. The very name, ‘Islamic Alliance’, adopted by the Islamist coalition supporting Morsi, confirms a widespread suspicion that the Muslim Brotherhood are unpatriotic, an organization that puts its international ideology before its Egyptian nationalism. There have been rumors for months that the Brotherhood were planning to give over parts of the Egyptian Sinai for settlement by non-Egyptians, and that only the military stood in the way.  

Today, the military gave the Morsi administration an ultimatum of forty-eight hours to get the country under control or else the Generals will intervene. Ironically, that pronouncement by General El-Sissi was greeted with cheers by the same protesters who a few months ago had demonstrated against a military takeover of power. But June 30^th has been the chronicle of a coup foretold; for the past year, as some lamented the deterioration of the economic and social fabric of the country under the Morsi administration, others advised them to be patient, that further deterioration, indeed a complete breakdown, would be necessary to bring about a welcome intervention by the military and the ousting of Morsi.

Yesterday’s enemies are today’s allies, and vice versa. The anyone-but-Mubarak coalition is now the anyone-but-Morsi coalition. The irony is symptomatic of the desperate situation in which the country finds itself: in a game of shifting alliances, it is no longer civilian society against the military, or even against the loathed police, but secular Egypt against the Islamists.

As for U.S. policy, it is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. If it supports Morsi on the principle of the inviolable legitimacy of elections, it will be seen as supporting an undemocratic, incompetent, ideological Islamist regime rejected by the majority of Egyptians, as the millions on the street attest. If it supports the ouster of the Morsi administration, it will be seen as supporting a military coup against a democratically elected president. President Obama, on tour in Africa, felt he needed to address the events himself. It is not clear whether or not his uncomfortable balancing act was helpful, as he tried to simultaneously 'press for peace' on all sides while 'supporting democracy' but 'not counting heads in a protest.' 

But the real significance of June 30^th goes beyond Egypt, and beyond these protests. This is how the Arab Spring might play out: not a confirmation of the hoary conventional wisdom that, in the Middle East, it is either the rock of an autocratic strongman or the hard place of an Islamist takeover, but rather a protest-driven process of trial-and-error, as countries try out and reject one form of autocracy and incompetence after another. Perhaps, as the joke making the round in Egypt these days goes, the Muslim Brotherhood are like the measles, you have to catch it once to never get it again. In the long run, the convulsive process might actually lead to a democratic compromise on a reasonably competent form of governance, but  it will be, undeniably, a long ordeal.

Egypt's Last Chance Revolution: June 30th

When I told an American friend recently about the millions-strong revolt against President Morsi’s Islamist administration planned for June 30^th, she asked: “And does the regime know about it?” “Of course,” I retorted, “it’s been advertised for weeks!” In Egypt as elsewhere these days, revolutions are not only televised, they are advertised weeks ahead on social media to build momentum and pressure. The entire strategy is built on mobilizing a public response so massive it would overwhelm any attempt by the regime in power to thwart it.

That strategy worked in ousting Hosni Mubarak in January 2011, and many of the same elements that organized that successful revolt are now making a last ditch effort to reclaim their revolution from the Islamists who seem to have hijacked it when Muslim Brotherhood candidate Morsi was elected president a year ago on June 30^th.  Fifteen million people, by some counts, have pledged to participate in the demonstrations to force the abdication of President Morsi. The plan has already been released on social media: sit-ins are to begin two days earlier, on Friday and Saturday, and Tahrir Square is no longer the focus, the Presidential Itihadiya Palace is. Other key locations for launching demonstrations- Egypt’s Supreme Court, the Ministry of Defense, and the syndicate headquarters of the Judges, Lawyers, Journalists, and Police- represent groups with long-standing antipathy to the Muslim Brotherhood in general and more recently inflamed conflicts with the Morsi administration in particular.  

Marching orders are clear: protest only against Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood Party, and its ideological ‘Guidance Bureau’. Protest in the name of Egypt only, not in the name of any person, party, candidate, sect or group. Peaceful protest only: no incitement against police or military or engagement in any altercations with either or with any opposing demonstrators. Women to march only in the center of a demonstration, where they can best be protected. That last instruction is necessary given the alarming record of increased assaults on women demonstrators during the past two years. This time, the call-to-arms on Face Book stresses, this is the Last Chance Revolution. We must dig in for the long-haul; we must go into it with the mindset of ‘in it to win it.’ Failure means rule by the Muslim Brotherhood, forever and ever.

To an outside observer in the West, this might seem like hyperbole. Morsi was elected in a relatively free election, these observers point out, and ‘elections have consequences’ if democracy is to be respected. And yet, the notion of post-election, postmortem protest seems to be gaining ground right here in the United States, indeed right here in my backyard of North Carolina. The ‘Moral Monday’ movement  protests against what it perceives as regressive social and economic policies launched by the conservative Republicans who were elected in 2012 and now control the state- from the Governor’s mansion to the Legislature. ‘Moral Monday’ stages civil disobedience every week in which as many people as possible, and as many public figures as possible, try to get themselves arrested protesting against the reversal of civil rights and other issues.

Granted, trying to get arrested is not a problem for the Egyptian protesters taking their lives in their hands when they take to the streets on June 30^th. But the analogy holds: in some cases, election results, and their consequences, are deemed to be too disastrous to wait for the next round of elections. The stakes are infinitely higher in Egypt, where the consensus seems to be that the next elections, if they take place with the Muslim Brotherhood in power, will be a sham.

The big question, of course, is whether Morsi will resign in response to public pressure, however intense. And the answer seems to be that he will not, unless the military intervene to force his hand. That intervention, even a few months ago, would have been seen as a regression to the military dictatorship of the past sixty years; today it is seen by many as the lesser of two evils. The last straw, for many, was the shocking Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence two days ago that left four Shiite men dead. Shiites are so rare in Egypt today that most Egyptians are unaware of their existence, even if the more educated remember from their schoolbooks that the Fatimid Caliphate that ruled Egypt for two centuries, a thousand years ago, was Shia. Such sectarian conflict is unprecedented, and signals an extremist Salafi mindset that makes ‘infidels’ not just of Egyptian Copts but Shia Muslims as well.   

The fact that President Morsi tolerated a tirade against the Shia by a Salafi extremist during a recent rally days before the murderous attack adds fuel to the fire of the opposition in Egypt, already banking on despair over the worsening living conditions of the average man in the street. On the other hand, the plight of Coptic Christians seems to have turned the tide of Western public opinion against Morsi’s administration abroad.  With internal and external pressure mounting against the Islamists in power, it remains to be seen if June 30^th turns out to be the Chronicle of a Coup Foretold, or a bloody mess.  

Egypt: The Most Dangerous Moment of a Revolution

The most dangerous moment in a revolution, history teaches us, is not when the new rulers first come to power, but later when they are faced with their first serious opposition. That is when the new ruling forces are likely to turn most violent in repressing dissent, and often give way to more radical, bloodier elements. The French Revolution, the Russian, all followed that seemingly inexorable dynamic, leading to their form of ‘the Terror.’ Right on time, right on target, two and a half years after the January 25^th revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is set to face a major attempt at a countercoup. This time, the revolution will be televised. The Vendee is on!

June 30^th has been announced, for weeks now, as the date when fifteen million Egyptians who have signed the ‘Tamarod’ (Rebellion) petition have vowed to take to the streets to force the ouster of President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party rule. Whenever you talk to anyone living in Egypt today, you get the impression that their lives are on hold as they brace for the fatal day. June 30^th marks a year to the day when Morsi was inaugurated, the first president elected in relatively free elections against actual opposing candidates. His narrow margin of victory in that election is largely attributed to the anathema that prevented the secular/liberal revolutionary forces from voting for Morsi’s opponent, Mubarak loyalist and hardliner General Ahmed Shafiq. 

In an ironic reversal, today that same secular/liberal coalition that had organized the January 25^th uprising, toppled Mubarak, and- holding its nose- voted for Morsi over Shafiq, is preparing to attempt to force the resignation of Morsi and his cohort. The way the secular opposition see it, they are trying to win their revolution back from the Islamist forces that hijacked it. But as Doctor Frankenstein could attest, second thoughts may come too late.

It may or may not be too late already, the opposition forces argue, but it will certainly be too late if they wait until President Morsi comes up for re-election in another three years, and try to oust him at the ballot box. By then, the opposition believes, not only will the power-grabbing, judiciary-gutting Islamist party be too firmly entrenched to dislodge by peaceful means, but the deterioration of the country will be too far advanced to stanch the bleeding and reverse course. The economy is in free fall, and the daily life of the average citizen is plagued by power and water shortages, traffic nightmares and rampant insecurity. The boiling discontent will be harnessed, the organizers of June 30^th hope, to put pressure on President Morsi to resign.  

Beyond that point, the plans are not clear for the post-Morsi transition until a new round of early presidential elections yields a new president. The interim government, according to the opposition, might be a council broadly representing the opposition coalition but also the Islamist elements in the country, a sort of Directoire, headed by the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court. To ensure that this governing council oversees free and fair elections, any member who agrees to serve on the council forfeits his right to run for presidential election, and that includes Nobel Prize winner Mohamed Baradei.

But even the most optimistic are not counting on Morsi resigning in response to street pressure alone, so the intervention of the army and police will be crucial, particularly since the Islamist parties have also vowed their own counter-demonstrations, so violent clashes between opposing street protests are guaranteed. At the moment the roles of the army and police, those two historically quasi-independent forces, are unclear. The minister of the interior, responsible for the police, has made ambiguous pronouncements about who and what the police will protect. The Muslim Brotherhood has vowed to take into its own hands the protection of the president and the party headquarters. The military is known to have serious issues with the Islamists in power, and might intervene, but on the other hand, it might choose to stand on the sidelines.

If June 30^th sounds like January 25 redux, it is because the same scenario seems to be preparing to play out, with changes in some of the principal actors. Except that this time, after the success of the first revolution, the hopes may be higher, but so are the stakes, and, in the current desperate state of national polarization and economic meltdown, the danger is even greater.

Islamist First Family in Egypt: Style or Substance?

A parallel universe. There really is no other way to put it. More than anything today, Egyptians of all political stripes, whether devastated or delighted, are experiencing the surrealist sense of a parallel universe. In that universe, the all-powerful and ineluctable Pharaoh of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, is a prisoner in a hospital somewhere, and a bearded, shabby, obscure Islamist called Mohamed Morsi, a veteran of Mubarak’s prisons, is shown around the presidential palace by the same presidential guard that would never have allowed him within a mile of Mubarak’s person. Less than eighteen months ago, such a scenario would have been too far-fetched even for a movie spoof.

When Mubarak, his wife or his son made a public appearance, it was the culmination of careful coordination and preparation intended as much to preserve the aura of grandeur of the First Family as to shield its members from friction with the public. Especially when you are preparing for the succession to your son, you cultivate the unapproachable mystique of royalty.

By contrast, today in his first public appearance in Tahrir as President-elect, Morsi concluded a passionate, theatrical speech by flinging off his jacket, waving aside his guards, and wading into the crowd of thousands, making a show of relishing his ‘bain de foule’, or bathing in the crowd, as the French say.

Suzanne Mubarak, and Jihan Sadat before her, fully embraced the publicity and power of her role as ‘First Lady.’ In the eyes of the world, where rumors of their greed and ambition rarely penetrated, the two attractive women were reassuringly Westernized; their elegance and polish did credit to Egypt in state visits and international women’s conferences. They shared much: both were half-British, on the distaff side; both married young, to officers of more modest backgrounds; both continued their education later in life and earned advanced degrees while their husbands were in power. Both espoused the typical causes of child welfare, education, and in Suzanne Mubarak’s case, the arts.

Mohamed Morsi’s wife Naglaa Mahmoud comes from a different world. She is not an Egyptian Everywoman, as the New York Times wrote recently; she is an Islamist Everywoman, and many Egyptian women would deny that she represents them. She is not just ‘veiled’, as so many Egyptian women are, with a headscarf; she wears a ‘tarha’ or prayer veil, that sweeps down to her knees. Unlike Turkish President Gul’s wife, who makes every attempt to look attractive and stylish in spite of her headscarf, wearing six-inch ankle boots to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, Morsi’s wife, by contrast, seems to make every effort to look as severe and dowdy as possible.

Although she accompanied her husband to the United States, where he studied engineering while she gave birth to two of their sons, she herself holds no college degree. Naglaa Mahmoud keeps her maiden name, not as a sign of independence from her husband, but rather in adherence to the convention of Muslim societies, where a woman never takes her husband’s name. In fact, ‘Suzanne Mubarak’ and ‘Jihan Sadat’ never existed outside of media parlance; legally, they kept their maiden names, as evidenced by the court charges, after the revolution, against ‘Suzanne Sabet’, the maiden name of Mrs. Mubarak.

As nervous observers in Egypt today try to decode style for substance, President-Elect Morsi and his wife will come under the closest scrutiny. How will Morsi, a virtually unknown back-up candidate brought in at the last minute by the Muslim Brotherhood to contest the presidential elections, deal with the pressures of office? But Egypt has a history of dark horses, once dismissed as lightweights- Sadat was derided as Nasser’s yes-man and Mubarak as an accidental president- who, finding themselves elevated to the position of president, prove to have the tenacity and cunning to not only hang on to power but to sustain their rule for decades. Morsi might prove to be just such an accidental president, confounding expectations. Whether that is a prospect to be dreaded or welcomed depends on where you stand in a divided Egypt today.