Ok, so if you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’d think that the people of Egypt are hijacking our 4th of July celebration! The truth is, even if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past week, you may come to the same conclusion.
Egyptian military (SCAF) chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (pictured above), announced on July 3 that the country’s president, Mohammed Morsi, had been removed from office in the wake of public, but largely popular, unrest in the streets. The number of Egyptians protesting, some 33,000,000, was the largest number of protesters in a political event in the history of mankind (that I know of).
[The now] Ex-President Mohamed Morsi was a political unknown a year ago; he was not a great statesman. But in Egypt’s first popular presidential election, Morsi was the torch bearer for the Muslim Brotherhood and won 51.7% of the popular vote. The organization, which was founded in Egypt more than 80 years ago, had been banned for decades, most notably suppressed under the rule of Hosni Mubarak, has dreamt of ruling Egypt and the rest of the Islamic world.
Hosni Mubarak (former decades-long ruler of Egypt, now behind bars and rocking some sweet shades)
In the eyes of many that day was a great day for Egyptians; the people voted, and a party that was persecuted for most of its existence was actually elected and trusted by a majority to govern the country and bring the people’s demands for bread, freedom and social justice to the forefront. And it’s not like the SCAF, who were skeptical of the democratic alternative to Mubarak, intervened and didn’t give the Brotherhood a chance to rule. The SCAF gave Morsi and the Brotherhood a chance to rule; in fact they gave the Brotherhood a whole year to rule and the party publicly failed on its own merits over the course of that year. Perhaps the military chose not to intervene when the Brotherhood did win so as to prove to everyone that they were not fit to rule Egypt (that’s speculation of course).
Mohammed Morsi, the man of the hour.
The Brotherhood was elected with a slim majority (51.7% means that 48.3% voted for somebody else) and in the technical sense of the phrase, they “totally blew it.” Morsi and the Brotherhood assumed power and adopted a hardliner, exclusive approach to governing. They ignored a crippling economy, failed to ensure basic security and protection of minority groups, and refused to include other parties (even other Islamist groups) in a coalition government that we in the United States and other Westernized democracies, perhaps take for granted. In the end, the Muslim brotherhood led Egypt down the path of Islamic despotism and economic decline. But I guess since the Brotherhood took all the power, they can take all the blame.
That being said, I think the recent events of this week set a dreadful precedent for the region’s future. It encourages the people to get rid of their elected leaders by disrupting their rule as opposed to voting them out. It goes to show that the people were more concerned with Morsi’s failure to govern rather than with the democratic process. The thing people have been calling “democracy” in Egypt though isn’t the democracy we think of; this is mob rule, democracy in the rawest sense of the word, and probably one that Aristotle would think of (pull out your Freshman-year Political Science notes). But let’s not kid ourselves here and think that what’s happening now in Egypt is in the interest of ALL Egyptians. If you think that, then you probably think that the millions of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood live on the moon. Well, they live in Egypt too, and they also have interests, interests that they tried to force on others with no checks or balances. And that’s politics for you: factions and societal and economic pressures all in one pot that must be reconciled and sorted out. It is a constant struggle, and even some of us in the United States grow impatient of our own political struggles. Maybe Egypt isn’t quite ready for this experiment we call “democracy” yet. Now before you all get offended by this, I think democracy for an unprepared populace could be far worse than a Mubarak. Even Thomas Jefferson, a great American hero and a father of our Republic, agrees with me here. In a letter to Lafayette after Napoleon seized power, quelling the chaos of the French Revolution, Mr. Jefferson wrote (as an intellectual exercise, pretend he’s writing to someone in Egypt now):
“A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to be expected by your nation, nor am I confident they are prepared to preserve it. More than a generation will be requisite, under the administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge in the general mass of the people, and their habituation to an independent security of person and property, before they will be capable of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of a sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests for preservation. Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident; it becomes, with an unprepared people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one.”
A few more takeaways and things to look for/expect in the near future:
1) Don’t think just because the Muslim Brotherhood was booted out that all is ok now with them. Expect the Brotherhood to keep resisting and push back against this move by the military; they will not forget.
2) The people protesting in the streets were all united in that they wanted Morsi and the Brotherhood out, but that’s about all they really agree on. The future will be a struggle of their competing interests. Unfortunately for the politics of the Middle East, most countries have a “winner-take-all” policy.
3) For decades, since the Cold War to today, the military has essentially ruled, approving and backing an individual or a party. This is primarily because no military wants to be involved in the day-to-day affairs of running a country. The military has and will remain the primary source of power in the country, as with many countries, and will throw its weight behind any party or coalition that will see to managing the political economy and as such, limiting unrest.
4) Washington cannot do much to shape Egyptian politics right now, even if it tried. And for many reasons, it shouldn’t. I’m not going to say anything more about that point
I call upon the Egyptian people to prove me wrong. I would wholeheartedly welcome that. I sincerely hope that this coup is more akin to the one we witnessed in Portugal in 1974 than the one in Algeria in the 1990s. But as with all things though, time will tell.
Brooklyn Diplomat 