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Egypt: Neither Coup nor Revolution
AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 8, 2013 (130708)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"We did not launch this revolution nor risk our lives
only to change the players. We wanted to change the rules
of the game. That was the mandate we gave to Morsy. He
has failed in this crucial task, so we no longer
recognize him as a legitimate leader. He has broken the
terms of the mandate. And our revolution continues." -
Khaled Fahmy
The African Union, Senator John McCain, and the majority
of the Western media call it a coup. The majority of
Egyptians see it as a popular uprising, despite the
involvement of the military. Surely it is neither
exclusively one nor the other, however unsettling that
may be to our need to classify (and the practical
implications of doing so, such as whether U.S. aid is to
be suspended).
But what it is finally called will depend above all on
future unknowables and on Egyptians themselves, whether
those in the streets for or against, or in the barracks
and the courts. Changes are coming so fast that it is
difficult to find "up-to-date" analysis. But several
articles recounting the background of the period
following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak and the ouster of
his successor Mohamed Morsy are very helpful to set the context.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains two articles by well-informed
commentators and scholars, Khaled Fahmy in Egypt
and Juan Cole in the United States. Both date from before
the ouster of Morsy, but after the unprecedented public
protests that led to that event.
Several additional articles of particular interest:
"The unprofessional coverage of the 'coup'"
by Sara Abou Bakr
Daily News Egypt, July 7, 2013
http://tinyurl.com/ml7nj3h
The seven deadly sins of the Muslim Brotherhood by Khaled
Fahmy
1st July, 2013
http://tahrirsquared.com/node/5130
Egypt's "Revocouption" and the future of Democracy on the
Nile
07/04/2013 by Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/
"Egypt's coup de quoi!?" by Khaled Diab
http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/07/04/egypts-coup-de-quoi/
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins related to Egypt, see
http://www.africafocus.org/country/egypt.php
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
'We did not risk our lives simply to change the players'
By Khaled Fahmy, Special for CNN
July 3, 2013
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/03/opinion/egypt-morsy-khaled-fahmy/
Editor's note: Khaled Fahmy is the chairman of the
history department at the American University in Cairo.
Follow @khaledfahmy11 on Twitter.
(CNN) -- Two days before Hosni Mubarak was ousted as
president of Egypt, I wrote an article for CNN calling
for the Muslim Brotherhood to have a place in the postMubarak
Egypt.
Back then, I wrote: "As a secularist, I am not in favor
of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt, and I
remain deeply skeptical of its political program,
believing that much of it is vague and impractical. But
as an Egyptian hoping for freedom and justice for my
country, I am deeply convinced that the Muslim
Brotherhood has a place within a free and democratic
Egypt."
A year and half later, and after participating with my
fellow Egyptians in an inspiring peaceful revolution, I
went to cast my vote in the first free presidential
elections Egypt had ever witnessed. I was not happy with
either candidate: Ahmed Shafik, a hawkish representative
of the former regime, and Mohamed Morsy, the candidate of
the Muslim Brotherhood. I invalidated my vote.
Still, given that these were free and fair elections, I
recognized the winner, Morsy, as the legitimate president
of Egypt. Even though I never believed that he or his
organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, had a solution to
my country's woes, I accepted the result of the vote, and
prepared myself for the hard work that needed to be done
over the coming four years, his term in office, so that
we could have a chance to topple him in the next
presidential elections.
All of this changed six weeks ago. At midnight on May 18,
2013, I went down to Tahrir Square to sign the "Tamarod"
(rebel) campaign petition calling on Morsy to step down
immediately. And on June 30, I marched with millions of
other Egyptians in the largest demonstrations our country
has ever witnessed reiterating the same demand: Morsy has
to step down.
What changed?
What happened in Morsy's first year in office that forced
me to change my mind and decide to rebel against him? Are
the millions of people who marched in the streets
demanding his immediate resignation, including myself,
bad losers who simply could not accept the result of the
first free and fair elections Egypt has ever witnessed?
Or are we revolutionaries who have seen some of the main
demands of our revolution go unfulfilled?
Even though I had invalidated my vote, I had a sigh of
relief that Shafik did not win the elections. He had
pledged to adopt a policy of blood and iron to "cleanse
Tahrir" of the revolutionaries. Had he won the elections,
I thought, I would have had to join my fellow compatriots
to hold on to our newly-won territory and to make sure
that the demands of our revolution were fulfilled.
Morsy's win, I thought, meant I could catch my breath and
continue our struggle for a free and democratic Egypt,
while keeping a watchful eye on the new president.
However, Morsy undertook a series of disastrous steps
that made me question my briefly held guarded optimism.
Morsy had won with a mere 51.7% of the vote. I expected
him to understand the implications of this figure: he did
have a mandate, but Egypt was divided and his prime duty
would be to close its rifts. Morsy should have worked
hard to include the opposition in the key decisions
facing his troubled country. He should have tried to win
the trust of the half of the nation that had not voted
for his presidency.
Instead, Morsy adopted a hard line, exclusive approach
and trusted no one but the most extreme of his group, the
Muslim Brotherhood. The cabinet he chose and the
governors he selected were either Muslim Brotherhood
members or sympathizers of the iron-clad, clandestine
organization. In a revealing speech, Morsy addressed
members of the organization as "my family and folk,"
raising doubts among many Egyptians as to his true
sympathies: with the country at large or with his
secretive organization. And instead of reaching out to
the center, he courted the fundamentalist salafis on the
extreme right. Crucially, this resulted in a constituent
assembly which was dominated by Islamists and which ended
up drafting a deeply flawed constitution.
Still, I considered Morsy to be my president.
Throughout the fall of 2012, Morsy and his Muslim
Brotherhood launched an all-out war against Egypt's
judiciary. As a student of this institution, I recognize
the Egyptian judiciary's venerable history but also
realize that, like many of Egypt's institutions under
Mubarak's long reign, it has suffered from nepotism,
corruption and ineptitude. But the president and his
group were convinced that the judiciary was out to get
them, so they launched a coordinated attack aiming to
bring it into line.
They dismissed the Prosecutor General (akin to the U.S.
Attorney General), ordered their followers to lay siege
to the Constitutional Court and drafted a law sending to
retirement more than 3,000 judges whose sympathies were
suspected of lying with the former regime. The
culmination of this pogrom against the judiciary was a
constitutional coup in November 2012 in which Morsy
declared himself to be above the law and his orders to be
immune from any judicial oversight. With no sitting
parliament and with the judiciary under a ferocious
attack, we had a dictatorship in the making.
Still, I considered Morsy to be my president.
Throughout the first year in his term of office, Morsy
showed little respect for or tolerance of the opposition,
repeatedly accusing it of being in the pay of the feloul,
a derogatory term in Egypt which literally means remnants
of a defeated army, but which has come to refer to
members of the former regime. Instead of accepting that
the job of the opposition is to oppose, and that of the
government to govern, he blamed his own shortcomings on
what he believed was a conspiracy by the opposition to
thwart his efforts and to bring about his downfall.
Increasingly, he and his Muslim Brotherhood became more
and more intolerant of all dissenting voices. Thus, they
allowed their followers to lay siege on the "Media City",
a congregation of studios of independent TV stations at
the outskirts of Cairo. They drafted a draconian law
which would have curbed the work of NGOs and which is
much worse than anything that Mubarak had ever passed. A
freedom of information draft law, in which I personally
had participated in drafting, was rejected by the
Ministry of Justice by proposing an alternative text that
makes a farce of freedom of information.
Still, I considered Morsy to be my president.
For many months now, Morsy and his Muslim Brotherhood
have been performing a slow and sinister
"Brotherhoodization" policy, whereby senior, and not so
senior, officials in Egypt's bureaucracy are being
replaced by Brotherhood members. I do understand that in
the wake of any elections the winning side is expected to
make some changes to the administration so that the new
regime can execute their policies. But these changes are
typically limited to key positions within the
administration, usually the first and second tiers,
leaving the third and fourth ones intact to ensure
stability and continuity of the civil administration.
Morsy has few friends as deadline looms
'Brotherhoodization policy'
The Brotherhoodization policy has gone way beyond what is
normally expected in any healthy transitional process. In
addition to the provincial governors -- who are gradually
being replaced by Brotherhood members -- the Police
Academy is reportedly being infiltrated by members of the
clandestine organization. Within the Ministry of
Education, replacements have reached the level of school
principals. And the new Minister of Culture has replaced
the head of the Cairo Opera House, dismissed the head of
the Cairo Ballet Company, the head of the Egyptian Book
Authority (the largest government publishing house) , and
the director of the National Library and the National
Archives. The new appointees have no credentials except
being members or sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Still, I considered Morsy to be my president.
What prompted me to rebel against Morsy and forced me to
decide that he was no longer a legitimate president -- no
longer my president -- is not anything he did, but two
things he did not do, namely, bring the army under
civilian control and undertake a serious process of
security sector reform.
I am a historian of modern Egypt, and for the past 25
years, I have been working on the history of these two
specific institutions: the military and the police. I
have come to realize the enormous cost paid by the
Egyptian people in founding what are two crucial pillars
of any modern state. I have also come to the conclusion
that -- without subjecting the military to civilian rule
and without undertaking a serious effort to reform the
Egyptian police -- our bid for freedom, dignity and
social justice will always be thwarted.
When our revolution broke out on January 25, 2011,
millions participated for different reasons. There were
those who rebelled against endemic corruption, and there
were others who aimed for a more equitable distribution
of wealth. My personal cri de guerre was curbing the
power of the army and subjecting it to civilian rule, and
reforming the Egyptian police. Along with millions of my
compatriots, I marched in the streets of Cairo and risked
my life in Tahrir to achieve these two goals: subject the
army and its secretive budget to parliamentary scrutiny
and ending the endemic torture within Egyptian police
stations.
Morsy and his Muslim Brotherhood have miserably failed to
tackle either of these two lofty goals. Most crucially,
the constitution which was written by the president's
organization and their other Islamist allies failed to
subject the military budget to parliamentary oversight,
stipulate that the minister of defense be civilian, or
end the flawed process whereby civilians are tired in
front of military tribunals.
Similarly, Morsy has taken no measures whatsoever to
reform the security sector. He failed to understand the
significance of the revolution being launched on January
25, which is Police Day, the date having been carefully
chosen by the youth organizers to send a clear message
that we demand to live in a country with no torture. All
proposals to reform the sector were forcefully snubbed by
Morsy's government. Not a single police officer accused
of torture under Mubarak's long reign has been brought to
justice. The culture of impunity within the Ministry of
Interior has not been rectified. And torture continues to
be practiced in Egyptian prisons, jails and other places
of detention.
Personally, the turning point came on April 24, 2013. On
that day my driver's cousin, Wael Hamdi Rushi, was killed
in the Heliopolis Police Station. He had had a fight with
a shop keeper who summoned the police. The police came
and arrested Wael with his brother. In police custody, he
objected to the way they were treating his 14-year old
epileptic brother. So they smashed his head against the
wall until he died, hanged his body from a rope in his
prison cell and called his mother to watch him dangling
from the ceiling. Wael was 19.
Values of the revolution
Putting an end to police torture and curbing the power of
the military are not easy matters. But neither is risking
one's life in a revolution. We launched this revolution
not only to have free elections, but to have a new Egypt
in which we can live in dignity and freedom. Regrettably,
our first democratically elected president in Egypt, one
who owes his position to a revolution that he did not
launch nor did his organization believe in -- except in
the eleventh hour -- clearly does not believe in the
values of this revolution.
Winning with the slimmest margins, he found himself
confronted by a stern judiciary, a hostile press, a
powerful army and a corrupt police force. An unenviable
situation, it is true, but he had the revolution behind
him. Had he turned to us, we would have helped him tackle
the army and the police, not overnight it is true, but we
were willing to fight on. Instead, he chose to direct his
wrath against the judiciary and the press, while letting
the army and the police off the hook.
We did not launch this revolution nor risk our lives only
to change the players. We wanted to change the rules of
the game. That was the mandate we gave to Morsy. He has
failed in this crucial task, so we no longer recognize
him as a legitimate leader. He has broken the terms of
the mandate. And our revolution continues.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely
those of Khaled Fahmy.
How Egypt's Michele Bachmann Became President and Plunged
the Country Into Chaos
http://www.truthdig.com/ / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/p73pzbn
Jul 1, 2013
By Juan Cole
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi may or may not survive
Sunday's massive protests, organized by the youth
Rebellion (Tamarrud) Movement. They are, nevertheless, a
milestone in modern Egyptian history and a warning to him
about his arrogant and highhanded style of governing from
his fundamentalist base. Morsi, from the Muslim
Brotherhood, represents the equivalent of the American
tea party in Egyptian politics—captive to the religious
right, invested in austerity and smaller government, and
contemptuous of workers and the political left. In his
first year in office, the nation's first freely elected
head of state has squandered Egyptians' willingness to
give him the benefit of the doubt. He has acted like the
president of the somewhat cultish Muslim Brotherhood,
rather than like the president of the whole country. Here
are the major errors he has made, which have polarized
Egypt and created a severe crisis that some observers
worry could turn into a civil war.
On taking office in summer 2012, Morsi did not appoint a
government of national unity. He named no politicians
from other major parties to important cabinet posts, nor
did he reach out to the revolutionary youth. Although he
made a neutral technocrat, Hisham Qandil, his prime
minister, he put members of the Brotherhood's Freedom and
Justice Party in charge of key cabinet posts. He thus
created the impression that he was trying for a
"Brotherization" of the government.
Despite Egypt's sagging economy, Morsi did not make
stimulating it his first priority, and instead tried to
please the International Monetary Fund with austerity
policies, rather on the model of the Mariano Rajoy
government in Spain. The Brotherhood's class base is
private business, whether small or large, and Morsi has
been distinctly unfriendly to the demands of labor unions
and to those of the public sector, which account for half
of the country's economy. In 2009, economists such as
Paul Krugman warned that Barack Obama's stimulus was far
too small. Morsi, steward of a much more fragile economy,
put forth no stimulus at all.
Once he became president, Morsi had an opportunity to
address the inequities in the constitutional drafting
committee, which was disproportionately in the hands of
fundamentalist Muslim Brothers and Salafis, marginalizing
liberals, leftists, women and Coptic Christians. He had
promised that the constitution would be consensual, but
that body was highly unlikely to produce a widely
acceptable organic law for the nation. Morsi let the
unfair composition stand, and he appears to have been
afraid that it would be struck down by the courts (it
finally was, long after it mattered, in the spring).
In November 2012, Morsi abruptly announced on television
that he was above the rule of law and his executive
orders could not be overturned by the judiciary until
such time as a new constitution was passed. He seems in
part to have been trying to protect the religious-rightdominated
constitutional drafting committee. His
announcement enraged substantial sections of the Egyptian
public, who had joined to overthrow dictator Hosni
Mubarak precisely because the latter had held himself
above the rule of law.
In response to the massive demonstrations that his
presidential decree provoked, Morsi pushed through a
constitution that is unacceptable to a large swath of
Egyptians. Even though two dozen members of the drafting
committee resigned to protest key provisions of the draft
constitution, which they saw as back doors for theocracy,
Morsi accepted the Brotherhood/Salafi draft and presented
it to the nation in a countrywide referendum. Egypt's
judges, who are supposed to preside over and certify the
balloting, went on strike, but the president forged ahead
anyway. Only 33 percent of voters went to the polls, many
of them supporters of the president. The constitution was
passed, but much of the country clearly was uncomfortable
with it. Morsi's promise of a consensual document was
hollow. The referendum could not be certified as free and
fair by international standards.
All the trouble Morsi caused by announcing himself above
the law and ramming through a controversial constitution
with some theocratic implications caused a new round of
demonstrations and instability, which harmed Egypt's
prime fall-winter tourist season. Tourism represents 11
percent of the Egyptian economy and employs more than 2
million professionals, but travelers looking for
pyramids, not protests, have stayed away the last two
years. In 2011, tourism was off by a third. Even as
visitors began coming back this spring, they spent less
money than they would have three years ago, since hotel
and other prices have fallen. I was told by Marriott
employees in Egypt when I was there in early June that
visitors are now mostly going to enclave sites such as
Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada, not to Cairo and Luxor on
Pharaonic tours. They said that tourism from the Gulf oil
monarchies was moribund (Morsi has bad relations with the
United Arab Emirates, and besides, many Gulf travelers
had been trying to escape the stifling atmosphere of
fundamentalist governments in Egypt's easygoing cabarets,
many of which have closed or canceled belly dance
performances). The falloff in tourism revenue has cost
Egypt billions in income and foreign currency reserves.
The Brotherhood, made up of religious fundamentalists,
appears not very interested in the tourist sector, which
depends after all on liquor, cabarets, beaches and
bikinis or on foreigners' fascination with ancient
Egyptian idolaters—i.e., on everything Muslim
fundamentalism stands against. The instability also
harmed foreign investment, even from the Gulf oil states,
since no one wants to build a tourist hotel or office
building that may not make money under Brotherhood
policies.
The collapse of tourism and the lack of private
investment caused Egypt's foreign currency reserves to
fall from $36 billion to $15 billion in only two years.
Because the foreign reserves were the tool used by the
Central Bank to defend the value of the Egyptian pound,
it suddenly lacked the ability to prevent devaluation
against the dollar. Since early in the last decade, the
pound has been allowed to float against other currencies
but the float is "managed." The decline in value of the
pound caused food and diesel prices to rise (Egypt is a
net importer of food because it covered its best farmland
along the Nile with concrete in order to urbanize). A
third of Egyptians live on $2 a day, and they are very
sensitive to food and fuel price inflation. Morsi is
widely now thought to have been more interested in
winning political victories over his opposition and
promoting the interests of the religious right than in
getting the economy humming again.
Once the constitution was approved, Morsi moved to create
the fiction that he had a functioning legislature,
packing it with Muslim Brothers. The lower house of
parliament elected in fall 2011 had been struck down by
the courts, since the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis
had run party candidates for most of the seats set aside
for independents (one third of the total), and these
party candidates easily defeated unknown and poorly
funded independents. Morsi abruptly appointed 90 members
to the previously largely ceremonial upper house, a
significant number from the Freedom and Justice Party and
its allies or fellow travelers of the religious right. He
then declared that the upper house could independently
legislate, even in the absence of the elected parliament,
and even though only 7 percent of its seats were elected.
The religious right began crafting legislation. The
courts struck down the upper house in June, though to no
great effect.
Last month, Morsi suddenly appointed 17 provincial
governors (governors are appointed, not elected, in
Egypt, which is one of the things wrong with Egyptian
politics). Several of them were Muslim Brothers or
Salafis, and one was a member of the al-Gama'a alIslamiya,
a former terrorist group. Adel al-Khayat was
appointed to govern Luxor, the site of the Valley of the
Kings and a major tourist destination. The Gama'a had
conducted a terrorist strike there, killing dozens of
tourists in 1997. Luxor was not willing to forgive the
Gama'a, and demonstrators demanded that the appointment
be withdrawn. Al-Khayat resigned last week. Again, that
Morsi was using his position as president to turn the
Egyptian government over to the religious right, and
sometimes to its most extreme wing, frightened and
angered liberals, leftists, Coptic Christians and women.
Morsi's various decrees, announcements, policies and
appointments have created apprehension among millions of
Egyptians that his primary goal is deploying the power of
the state to impose religious fundamentalism on the
country and to ensconce his Muslim Brotherhood
permanently throughout the government and the judiciary.
The fear of liberals concerning Muslim fundamentalist
groups had long been that they would behave as the German
National Socialists or as the Stalinist Communists had,
participating in elections only until they won, and then
arranging for a one-party state thereafter. There is no
evidence that Morsi has such a design, and he did try to
schedule parliamentary elections in April, but the plan
was struck down by the courts because he did not consult
them on the enabling legislation. But Morsi, given the
widespread fear of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, had a
responsibility to go out of his way to allay those
anxieties. Instead, he reinforced them at every turn.
Egyptians have been galvanized and politically mobilized
by the events of the past 30 months, and refuse to be
quiet in the face of what they see as incompetent
government and unfair Brotherization. Morsi so far has
refused to get the message, secure in the support of his
base and the legitimacy bestowed by winning the June 2012
election. Whether he finally demonstrates more
flexibility in the aftermath of the recall movement
against him will determine whether Egypt returns to
prosperity or faces more years of instability.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic
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