Daily Times Editorial July 5, 2013

The revolution resumed? Egypt’s powerful military finally overthrew President Mohamad Morsi after the latter had defied the 48 hour deadline the army had imposed for a solution to the political crisis that has had the country in its grip since January this year. The overthrown Muslim Brotherhood leader was reportedly being held in a Republican Guards barracks. General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army commander, announced a political transition with the support of a wide range of political, religious and youth leaders. General Sisi also announced the suspension of the Islamist-drafted constitution and a roadmap for a return to democratic rule under a revised rulebook. The president of the constitutional court has been appointed interim head of state, assisted by an interim council and a technocratic government until new presidential and parliamentary elections. Sisi said an agreement had been reached (obviously with Morsi’s opponents) on building a strong, cohesive, inclusive society. The tens of thousands of protestors on the streets erupted with joy at the development. Morsi categorised the move as a “full military coup” that he “totally rejected”. The military had in its ultimatum titled “The Final Hours”, warned the overthrown president that if he failed to resolve the differences with the protestors on the streets within 48 hours, the military would be forced to impose its own solution. Initially defiant, Morsi tried at the last possible moment to suggest a coalition government could overcome the crisis. But it proved too little too late. The momentum of events had long passed the point of no return. The opposition refused to negotiate with Morsi and instead met the army commander. That sealed Morsi’s fate. The military was in control of the state broadcasters’ headquarters and had banned Morsi and about 40 of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders from leaving the country. A rally of tens of thousands of Morsi’s supporters was prevented by tanks from marching on the presidential palace or the Republican Guards barracks where Morsi was being held. Sisi insisted the government would be “strong and capable” with “full capacities”. A panel to look into amendments in the constitution would be formed and a law framed to regulate parliamentary elections. Although Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen were veering between calls for peaceful resistance and dire predictions of “considerable bloodshed”, the mood on the streets was one of elation rather than foreboding. So ends the experiment of allowing an Islamist party of long standing, hardened in struggle against repression over decades to take power through the ballot. The staggered parliamentary elections from November 28, 2011 to February 15, 2012 had given the Muslim Brotherhood almost half the seats, with the even more hardline Salafists gathering another quarter. Morsi himself garnered 51.7 percent of the vote in a runoff presidential election in June 2012. These results convinced the Islamists that they could remould the Egyptian polity and society along their preferred lines. This was a misreading of the thrust and import of the uprising against Mubarak. The spontaneous uprising was led by liberal, democratic, secularist forces initially. The Muslim Brotherhood joined in later, after an initial period of vacillation. However, the organized political forces of the Islamists overwhelmed the disparate, disorganised, disunited forces of the ‘revolution’ in the electoral race. This victory went to their head and they chose a course of Islamisation that clearly was the antithesis of the uprising’s declared and undeclared aims and objectives. The Muslim Brotherhood government, with the support of the Salafists, alienated the liberals and secularists by seeking to entrench Islamist rule, notably in the new constitution that was rammed through parliament despite the withdrawal of the opposition from the process of its drafting. But the Islamists also alienated millions more with economic mismanagement that has brought the Egyptian economy virtually to its knees. The coming together of all these strands on the streets in protest, which grew from the commemoration of the second anniversary of the uprising against Mubarak on January 25, 2013 into an irresistible force, indicates that the agenda of political exclusiveness practiced by the Islamists evoked alarm and eventually protest on such a scale that the tide turned against Morsi and company. The question now is what the future holds. It would be in the fitness of things, and in line with the message of the protestors on the streets, that the interim period should be as short as possible, democracy should be restored as soon as the inclusive antithesis of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood is agreed, and the democratic revolution resume its forward march after overcoming the disastrous byway of Islamism in which it remained trapped over the last year or so.