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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJuan Cole: Egypt’s Transition Has Failed: New Age of Military Dictatorship in Wake of Massacre
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Once Muhammad Morsi was elected president in June, 2012, he made a slow-motion coup. He pushed through a Brotherhood constitution in December of 2012 in a referendum with about a 30% turnout in which it garnered only 63% i.e. only a fifth of the country voted for it. The judges went on strike rather than oversee balloting, so the referendum did not meet international standards. When massive protests were staged he had them cleared out by the police, and on December 6, 2012, is alleged to have sent in Brotherhood paramilitary to attack leftist youth who were demonstrating. There were deaths and injuries.
Morsi then invented a legislature for himself, declaring by fiat that the ceremonial upper house was the parliament. He appointed many of its members; only 7% were elected. They passed a law changing the retirement age for judges from 70 to 60, which would have forced out a fourth of judges and allowed Morsi to start putting Brotherhood members on the bench to interpret his sectarian constitution. He was building a one party state. His economic policies hurt workers and ordinary folk. He began prosecuting youth who criticized him, his former allies against the military. 8 bloggers were indicted. Ahmad Maher of The April 6 youth group was charged with demonstrating (yes). Television channels were closed. Coptic school teachers were charged with blasphemy. Morsi ruled from his sectarian base and alienated everyone else. He over-reached.
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But the Egyptian military bears the other part of the blame for the failed transition. Ambitious officers such as Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Morsis Minister of Defense, were secretly determined to undo Morsis victory at the polls. They said they wanted him to compromise with his political rivals, but it seems to me they wanted more, they wanted him neutered. When the revolutionary youth and the workers and even many peasants staged the June 30 demonstrations, al-Sisi took advantage of them to stage a coup. Ominously, he then asked for public acclamation to permit him to wage a war on terror, by which he means the Brotherhood. I tweeted at the time: Dear General al-Sisi: when activists call for demonstrations, that is activism. When generals do, that is Peronism.
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The military and the Brotherhood are two distinct status groups, with their own sources of wealth, which have claims on authority in Egypt. Those claims were incompatible.
http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/transition-military-dictatorship.html
cali
(114,904 posts)all saying much the same thing, though they don't all come at it from the same perspective. And all are fluent in Arabic and have all lived for extended periods in the Middle East and/or Egypt, except for Feldman who lived there only for a relatively brief time though he has traveled extensively in the region.
Cole touches on something that's important: the vast wealth and business interests of those in the military.
Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)and now they want to seize the moment to break it completely.
And Morsi's calls for jihad against Syria didn't help either.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)And we are pretty much back where things have always been: same tune, perhaps with a different tempo and pitched in a fresh key....
Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)I hear there's calls from Qatar to the AQ rebels in Syria.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)Algeria twenty-odd years ago comes to mind.
cali
(114,904 posts)Cole, Feldman, Murphy and Engel all view the future as even darker than those of the Mubarak decades. Engel thinks that there's a very real possibility of civil war and explains that under Mubarak access to weapons for insurgents was limited and that is not so now.
None of them think that this is right back to where things were before Mubarak was overthrown.
but hell, what would they know?
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)Subtlety and nuance are not your strong suits. Nor, for that matter, is reduction to essentials.
The situation is what it has been; military rule. The facade is down, certainly, and at this moment there is active repression; the thing is in an acute episode of a the chronic condition. civil war is certainly possible; that is what happens when attempts top suppress a movement with some mass footing fails, and the generals could fail.
cali
(114,904 posts)surely you don't claim to be subtle. Your comments demonstrate that you are anything but.
You return time and time again to striking out with your non-sequitur comments about how I'm not subtle or nuanced. When it comes to wholesale slaughter, you're quite right. I condemn it. You equivocate. That's fine, but I have enough subtlety to recognize that there's a time when so-called subtlety and nuance become defense of the indefensible.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)Still call it 'the green pot', because it was that ghastly avocado green popular back then when it was new. Use it for damned near everything, including deep frying. Asked one of my grand-kids to get me 'the green pot' not long ago, he emerged from the cupboard saying he couldn't see a green pot in there. It has indeed gone pretty completely black by now, though when I fetched it out and looked it over close, I could find a couple of tiny patches still showed traces of the original finish.