If there is any worthy lesson to extract
from the recent Military soft coup in Egypt, it must be the unrealistic
reality that there are peoples who are able to coexist with
authoritarianism for tens of years, but cannot stand democracy for a
single year. It is within the limit, considering the time and the
available tools, as well as the challenges to overcome, of one year that
the Egyptian newly elected president is judged to be unable to pull the
country out of all the imbroglios it has been undergoing. Not only
this, but the president is blamed for concentrating, oftentimes planning
to concentrate, all powers in his hands instead of working in
harmonious concurrency with all the political players of the nation
regardless of what ideology they are. Nevertheless, the mostly pertinent
query, if neutrally approached, as to whether the opposition’s upraise
to oust Morsi emanates from righteously noble urges or merely
antagonistic motives should, and only can, have one response: Morsi’s
presidency was doomed.
A premiere argument the opposition
leaders would reiterate questions the legitimacy of a democratically
elected president when faced by street protestations. One of them points
out, “Democracy is not just the ballot box”
but also the commitment of the elected leader to the soul and heart of
democratic practices that dictate working for and towards the civil
rights of all people. After all, another ironically argued, even Adolf
Hitler had been elected president democratically only to end up putting
on the devil’s pajamas; if the Germans had courageously marched against
his imperialistic fantasies, the world might not have endured the
apocalyptic devastation of World War II. Though, the dissemblance
between Morsi and Hitler is as large as life.
According to a number of leading
protestors, Examples of infringement include (1) the writing of the
constitution without engaging the opposition, (2) the concentration of
all powers in the hands of the president and members of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and (3) the inability of the government to convalesce the
living conditions and the induction of social justice as promised during
the presidential electoral campaign. The bottom line is that the wheels
of Egypt were flying off and the president had to throw the towel for
capable leaders to steer the nation through the marring challenges of
the incessant merciless strikes of time.
However, the scenario the anti-Morsi
movement connived and contrived to carry out, reveals how radical,
fundamental, abnegating, and specially, astigmatic the recent rise has
been. A pyramid analogy does, ergo, absorb and reflect the whole status
quo, for the army, the civil opposition and the media together
constitute the angles while the judicial system stretches its
octopuslike arms through its area. In their article In Egypt, the Deep
State Rises Again, Charles Levinson and Matt Bradley of The Wall Street Journal
points out, “Egypt’s opposition and Mubarak-era officials began to mend
in November…Some meetings took place at the Navy Officer’s Club, where
the generals said that if enough Egyptians joined public protests, the
military would have little choice but to intervene.” The military
ultimatum after the opposition took out to the Squares was so clear and
so vague; for the opposition, it only signified the end of Morsi and his
government as concurrently planned. Yet, the brotherhood, and all those
who thought Egypt was at last a democracy, the clarity of the ultimatum
was blurred by their trust and inability to calculate the development
of events accurately.
Mike Giglio on the Daily Beast
has revealed, “although they pretended to be neutral, the Egyptian Army
played a role in planning the ouster of President Morsi.” He highlights
how the Tamarod leaders were in regular contact with a group
of retired military officers,” who “promised to protect the protestors”
and “said they were reaching out on behalf of the Army’s current
commanders.” Amazingly, at the time the Army and the Police were
protecting the anti-Morsi protestations, the Muslim Brotherhood’s
headquarters were being bulldozed since police officers paraded along
civil protestors in reckless infringement of duty. They justified their
inappropriate acts by not having to work for “the benefit of a certain
political party,” as reported by Ahmad Tarnah of the Egypt Independent.
The alike of this policing logic could only emanate from, a bleared and
blearing vision of the intersection between rights and obligation, a
handicapped interpretation of the private interest and the common good,
and, above all, a misunderstanding of where democracy starts and where
it does actually end.
To limit the size and slow the speed of
any reverberations the toppling of the president might instigate, the
army abruptly and without a legal warrant closed down all media outlets
that voice out the opinion of the Brotherhood and their sympathizers;
they have closed all opposing local channels and distorted the foreign
ones; an act that has hit the heart of the freedom of speech the
revolution of January 25 had gloriously achieved. There is actually no
sound interpretive reading that might not condemn the closure of local
T.V. stations prior to any legal warrant, and worse still, the arrest of
tens of journalists. It is, henceforth, quite safe to claim that the
media exclusive despotism in the Egypt of today is of no-alike
throughout the modern history of the nation. What logic could explicate
how and why all the currently allowed operating channels are not only
all-out partisans of the Tamarod Movement but also deeply hostile to opinions that flow along the Islamic stream.
The Army, with the benediction of the
opposition, has launched a series of arrests against the leaders of the
Muslim Brotherhood immediately after the ousting of the president.
During one week, the number of members of the Freedom and Justice Party
arrested rose to almost 300, and no state official has yet offered any
credibly dependable account for this very condemned act. Such a
condemnation should stem and node from no sympathy for the Muslim
Brotherhood, whatsoever, but simply, not simplistically though, from the
universal legal and ethical concurrency that political belonging is the
right of all citizens as long as it does constitute no domestic and/ or
interstate threat.
It is in Egypt where the president of
yesterday is the prisoner of today, where the legitimacy of the
righteous falls apart in the chasm of the unrighteous, where opposers
oppose just for the sake of opposing, where chaos roams the heart of
consequential order, where the spears of pervasive pertinacity are
chucked into the wheels of the nation’s future, where Western democracy
divides a Southern nation, and where two presidents are in arrest.
After all, democracy does not happen. It
is human made, and so is unfortunate chaos. Underdeveloped nations do
not starve because of lack of rain or an excess of it. Whilst, the
welfare of and in developed states is not thanks to regulated
precipitation or a blessing of it. The difference is that while some
people have experienced, known, valued and stuck to democracy, others,
when the window of opportunity has reached their doorstep, have cruised
deeper than deep. There, they are beyond democracy.
Only Egyptians can lead Egypt through
the current marring political and economic imbroglios facing the
country; nevertheless, that could never be securely reached if not all
parties are willingly prepared to re-mould, reevaluate and reprioritize
their interests towards the welfare of the nation as a whole.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “an eye for an
eye makes the whole world blind”. Yet, the question to wonder about is
what Gandhi would say in comment on the only nation in modern, and may
be all through, human history that has dared to imprison two presidents
at the same time.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy
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