Omar Ashour
Tahrir didn’t celebrate an expansion of liberty, but the exclusion of one part of the Egyptian people by another.
By Omar Ashour
In September 2011, I was part of a diverse group of Egyptian activists, from liberals to Salafis, we set up for a single purpose: To persuade all candidates running in the presidential election to commit to keeping the military out of politics for good.
All but one candidate, the former UN diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, signed up. When we sent a petition to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, asking it to make the same pledge — to end military rule and hand over power to civilians — it didn’t bother to reply.
I’m telling this to show how little regard Egypt’s army commanders have had for civilian politicians from day one.
Now, citing demands from the people (and there is no doubt many Egyptians wanted a coup), the military, led by Defence Minister Abdel Fatah Al Sisi, has deposed the first freely elected president, Mohammed Mursi, after a year in office, and suspended the constitution 64 percent of Egyptian voters approved in December 2012. The generals will probably now appoint a committee to draw up a new one.
The junta overnight voided 14 nationwide rounds of free and fair democratic votes. Six of these were for the lower house of parliament; four for the upper house; two for presidential election; and two were constitutional referendums.
The winners were the same in every case, and some are in jail. The losers were the same each time, too. They included ElBaradei, who on July 6 accepted an offer to become interim prime minister, only for it to be withdrawn after opposition from the sole Islamist party that supported the coup.
It is important to grasp all of this clearly to understand the mindsets of the two groups of people who will determine Egypt’s fate — the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. There are broadly three possibilities.
One, the most hopeful and least likely is that the coup will serve as a launching pad for liberal democracy.
For this to work will require the Muslim Brotherhood to acquiesce, return peacefully to the electoral system and lose in the next election. It assumes, too, that the military will quickly oversee elections and retire into the background again, leaving the Brotherhood free to campaign and win re-election unobstructed.
Given the deep sense of injustice on one side and the cynical approach to civilian politics on the other, this isn’t going to happen. On July 5, 36 people were killed in pro-Mursi protests in Cairo, and a day later militants blew up the pipeline that carries natural gas to Jordan.
The second scenario resembles the experience of Turkey in 1997, when a group of generals from the National Security Council sent a memo to the Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, asking him to resign.
Erbakan obliged, and arrests and mild repression followed, including the closing of the Welfare Party and the jailing of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then mayor of Istanbul and a member of the Islamist party.
The third and most disturbing possible outcome for Egypt is Algeria in 1992: A harsh crackdown on elected Islamists by the military, followed by a vicious civil war.
One reason to hope Egypt won’t follow that path is that the military hasn’t yet been threatened. After the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the army had three red lines to protect.
It needed a veto in high politics, such as the relationship with Israel, and immunity from prosecutions in civilian courts.
It also required security for a commercial empire that features preferential customs and exchange rates; no taxation; land-confiscation rights (without paying the treasury); and a virtually cost-free labour force of conscript soldiers. This is a black hole in the formal economy that by some estimates accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the GDP.
So far, the coup matches none of the above. The generals and the Muslim Brotherhood have acted less aggressively than their counterparts in Algeria 1990s. At the same time, events have been less “postmodern” than in Turkey. Mursi didn’t obligingly step down when asked, and the military suspended the constitution.
Troops were sent into the streets, leaders of the winning party arrested, their homes searched, and some pro-Mursi protesters shot. It remains possible that the Muslim Brotherhood will be declared illegal.
There is another Turkish scenario: The 1980 coup of General Kenan Evren, now on trial for his actions, more than two decades later.
As in Egypt today, Evren’s coup was genuinely popular among swaths of the Turkish population, but quickly turned sour, producing a terrible constitution and widespread abuse of human rights. Evren’s intervention caused a 20-year setback for democratic progress in Turkey.
It was beyond imagining to see Tahrir Square, a place that in 2011 symbolised the struggle for Arab democracy and freedom, cheering the end of a democratic process and annulling the votes of millions of Egyptians last week.
On July 3, Tahrir didn’t celebrate an expansion of liberty, but the exclusion of one part of the Egyptian people by another. The consequences are impossible for any of those involved to predict.
WP-BLOOMBERG
Tahrir didn’t celebrate an expansion of liberty, but the exclusion of one part of the Egyptian people by another.
By Omar Ashour
In September 2011, I was part of a diverse group of Egyptian activists, from liberals to Salafis, we set up for a single purpose: To persuade all candidates running in the presidential election to commit to keeping the military out of politics for good.
All but one candidate, the former UN diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, signed up. When we sent a petition to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, asking it to make the same pledge — to end military rule and hand over power to civilians — it didn’t bother to reply.
I’m telling this to show how little regard Egypt’s army commanders have had for civilian politicians from day one.
Now, citing demands from the people (and there is no doubt many Egyptians wanted a coup), the military, led by Defence Minister Abdel Fatah Al Sisi, has deposed the first freely elected president, Mohammed Mursi, after a year in office, and suspended the constitution 64 percent of Egyptian voters approved in December 2012. The generals will probably now appoint a committee to draw up a new one.
The junta overnight voided 14 nationwide rounds of free and fair democratic votes. Six of these were for the lower house of parliament; four for the upper house; two for presidential election; and two were constitutional referendums.
The winners were the same in every case, and some are in jail. The losers were the same each time, too. They included ElBaradei, who on July 6 accepted an offer to become interim prime minister, only for it to be withdrawn after opposition from the sole Islamist party that supported the coup.
It is important to grasp all of this clearly to understand the mindsets of the two groups of people who will determine Egypt’s fate — the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. There are broadly three possibilities.
One, the most hopeful and least likely is that the coup will serve as a launching pad for liberal democracy.
For this to work will require the Muslim Brotherhood to acquiesce, return peacefully to the electoral system and lose in the next election. It assumes, too, that the military will quickly oversee elections and retire into the background again, leaving the Brotherhood free to campaign and win re-election unobstructed.
Given the deep sense of injustice on one side and the cynical approach to civilian politics on the other, this isn’t going to happen. On July 5, 36 people were killed in pro-Mursi protests in Cairo, and a day later militants blew up the pipeline that carries natural gas to Jordan.
The second scenario resembles the experience of Turkey in 1997, when a group of generals from the National Security Council sent a memo to the Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, asking him to resign.
Erbakan obliged, and arrests and mild repression followed, including the closing of the Welfare Party and the jailing of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then mayor of Istanbul and a member of the Islamist party.
The third and most disturbing possible outcome for Egypt is Algeria in 1992: A harsh crackdown on elected Islamists by the military, followed by a vicious civil war.
One reason to hope Egypt won’t follow that path is that the military hasn’t yet been threatened. After the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the army had three red lines to protect.
It needed a veto in high politics, such as the relationship with Israel, and immunity from prosecutions in civilian courts.
It also required security for a commercial empire that features preferential customs and exchange rates; no taxation; land-confiscation rights (without paying the treasury); and a virtually cost-free labour force of conscript soldiers. This is a black hole in the formal economy that by some estimates accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the GDP.
So far, the coup matches none of the above. The generals and the Muslim Brotherhood have acted less aggressively than their counterparts in Algeria 1990s. At the same time, events have been less “postmodern” than in Turkey. Mursi didn’t obligingly step down when asked, and the military suspended the constitution.
Troops were sent into the streets, leaders of the winning party arrested, their homes searched, and some pro-Mursi protesters shot. It remains possible that the Muslim Brotherhood will be declared illegal.
There is another Turkish scenario: The 1980 coup of General Kenan Evren, now on trial for his actions, more than two decades later.
As in Egypt today, Evren’s coup was genuinely popular among swaths of the Turkish population, but quickly turned sour, producing a terrible constitution and widespread abuse of human rights. Evren’s intervention caused a 20-year setback for democratic progress in Turkey.
It was beyond imagining to see Tahrir Square, a place that in 2011 symbolised the struggle for Arab democracy and freedom, cheering the end of a democratic process and annulling the votes of millions of Egyptians last week.
On July 3, Tahrir didn’t celebrate an expansion of liberty, but the exclusion of one part of the Egyptian people by another. The consequences are impossible for any of those involved to predict.
WP-BLOOMBERG
