Between a rock and a hard place. Between the devil and the
deep blue sea. Between Scylla and Charybdis (mythical sea monsters depicted in
Homer’s epic, the “Odyssey”).
Take your pick. They all refer to the situation the Egyptian
people finds itself today.
Egypt has been the scene of almost unprecedented violence
since July 3, when President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in a military coup –
although for political reasons relating to the annual American delivery of $1.3
billion in military aid to Egypt, the Obama administration refuses to call it
that. (Not that Egypt would miss the money that much -- Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates and Saudi Arabia together have pledged $12 billion to Egypt, and they
have done so without the conditions that the U.S. Congress places on
American-appropriated funds.)
The government installed last month by General Abdul-Fattah
el-Sisi seems to be reverting to the autocratic rule Egyptians knew under the
30 year reign of former president Hosni Mubarak, the dictator deposed by mass
demonstrations in February 2011 and in detention since April 2011.
Ironically, most of the people who engineered the ouster of
Mubarak in order to transform Egypt into a democracy, now, two years later, had
called on the army to overthrow Morsi.
Commented one observer, “The problem in Egypt is that the
democrats aren’t liberals, and the liberals aren’t democrats.”
Morsi won a fairly free and fair election in June 2012, with
51.7 per cent of the vote in a runoff; the turnout was 51 per cent of eligible
voters. That’s actually a little more than Barack Obama received in November 2012,
and far more than the Conservative Party obtained in the Canadian federal
election of May 2012.
But the people who demanded Morsi’s resignation and almost
goaded the army into moving against him were clearly dissatisfied with his
Islamic agenda and wished to be rid of him, by any means. They refused to wait
until the next election.
Of course many Americans hate Obama, and many Canadians
detest Stephen Harper – but no one has advocated their removal by force. That’s
not how democracy works.
On the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood has no ideological
love for democracy; they would prefer a state run by the precepts of Islam
(with no voice for those opposing “God’s will”)
and so when in power, Morsi alienated all those Egyptians – at least
half the country – who feared he might turn the country into some kind of
theocracy.
The Brotherhood, founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, has
often suffered repression, arrests and torture. But its solidarity network and
the genuine self-denial of its activists gave it credibility for many people.
This vanished once they were in power.
Last November, Morsi issued a declaration that gave him full
executive and legislative authority. It’s possible there might not have been
another election – many of the people backing Morsi only support the electoral
process when it suits their purposes, nor do they have much use for due process,
pluralist democracy, or the rights of minorities. Hence the total polarization.
More than 1,000 Brotherhood members and other supporters of
Morsi have died since Aug. 14, and his ouster has set off a wave of retaliatory
violence from his supporters, mainly targeting churches around the country and
security forces in the northern Sinai.
New regulations now in place include an “emergency law”
removing the right to a trial and curbs on police abuse, the appointment of
generals as governors across the provinces and moves to outlaw the Muslim
Brotherhood as a terrorist threat. Most leaders of the organization have now
been arrested, including its spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie. He will be tried
later this month on charges of complicity in the killing in June of eight
protesters outside the Brotherhood’s national headquarters in Cairo.
On the other hand, a court has now ordered the release from
prison of Mubarak, which certainly serves to symbolize the return of the
ancient regime. General Sisi, the defence minister, was Mubarak’s head of
military intelligence, and the figurehead president, Adli Mansour, a judge, was
appointed to a top court under Mubarak.
Will Egypt’s choice always be between two forms of
authoritarianism?
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