The irony cannot be lost on anyone that millions of Egyptians are planning to mark the one-year anniversary of their democratic revolution by calling on their democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, to resign.
Here is how Mohamed ElBaradei – who heads the opposition National Salvation Front as well as the Al-Dustar Party – framed the clarion call for anti-government protests this weekend:
For Egypt’s sake, I call on President Mohamed Morsi to resign and give us the opportunity to begin a new phase based on the principles of the revolution, which are freedom and social justice.
I would like to call on President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood to respond to the cries from all over Egypt.
(Daily News Egypt, June 28, 2013)
Of course, Egyptians can be forgiven for never imagining in their worst nightmares that, less than two years after getting rid of their dictator, Hosni Mubarak, they would be back in revolutionary Tahrir Square.
Yet there they are; because, in many ways, the Islamist Morsi is turning out to be worse for Egypt than Mubarak ever was.
Here courtesy of Policymic is just “7 ways Egypt’s Morsi Has Failed His People Terribly” (June 28, 2013):
- His Muslim Brotherhood reneged on its promise to stay out of politics.
- His Party tried to legalize Necrophilia against women.
- He promised to support Israel, but embraced its enemies.
- He has governed more like a pharaonic ayatollah than a democratic president.
- His constitutional reforms marginalized ethnic and religious minorities.
- He arrested Egypt’s most famous political dissident, comedian Bassem Youssef (aka Egypt’s Jon Stewart).
- He has done nothing to curb fuel shortages, electrical black outs, runaway inflation, and rising unemployment. In other words, Egypt’s economy is “still in the crapper.”
But I warned it would be thus:
With all due respect to the protesters, the issue is not whether Mubarak will go, for he will. (The man is 82 and already looks half dead for Christ’s sake!) Rather, the issue is who will replace him. And it appears they have not given any thought whatsoever to this very critical question.
The devil Egyptians know might prove far preferable to the devil they don’t. Just ask the Iranians who got rid of the Mubarak-like Shah in 1979 only to end up with the Ayatollah — whose Islamic revolution they’ve regretted (and have longed to overturn) ever since….
(“Army Pledges No Force Against Protesters,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 1, 2011)
Enough said? Except that:
It seems the only thing that will satisfy these protesters — who clearly have no ability to lead Egypt’s transition and have no faith in the ability of anyone else to do so — is replicating throughout the entire country the festive state of anarchy that reigns among them in Tahrir Square (i.e., never-ending revolution).
(“Egyptian Revolution Part II,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 14, 2011)
Now, just as they did with Mubarak, protesters are calling on the military to get rid of Morsi. And the military seems all too willing to oblige. But it will set a fatal precedent for Egyptian democracy if the military uses the disaffected mob these protesters represent as a pretext to launch a coup d’état against the country’s democratically elected president. For, whatever the legitimacy of their grievances, this kind of mob rule is so anathema to democracy that getting rid of Morsi is tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Truth be told, I fear the only thing that will bring Egyptians to their senses is an all-out, bloody civil war….
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
(George Orwell, ‘1984’)
Related commentaries:
Egypt redux: Morsi the Pharoah
Egyptian revolution…