Egypt: On a tortuous path toward a new government

The Egyptian people have retaken power, said Ali Khamis in Al-Wafd (Egypt). The toppling of President Mohammed Mursi is a democratic triumph. Over the past year, since his election, we have been victims of a “complex operation of subjugation.” Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood hijacked the revolution, bypassing the democratic system to ram through an Islamist constitution. The U.S., meanwhile, tried “to force the people into accepting Muslim Brotherhood rule as it sought to redraw the map of the Middle East.” But we refused to submit. The massive uprising that brought millions of people into the street has prevailed, and “now the Egyptian people have subdued both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Americans.”

No, the Egyptian military did, said Can Dundar in Milliyet (Turkey). It wasn’t protesters that deposed Mursi, it was Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi—and from where I sit, that’s called a military coup. The democratic way to remove a president is through an election, not an uprising. As Turks well know from our own experience, “the damage from a coup outweighs the damage that could have been inflicted by those who were overthrown.” But look at the math, said Alaa al-Aswany in Al-Safir (Lebanon). Mursi was elected with just 13 million votes in a land of 84 million people. A year later, more than 30 million people took to the streets to overthrow him. “If we were to ask whether this was a democratic process, the answer would be yes.”

Crucially, the generals spoke to all factions of Egyptian politics before acting, said Tariq Alhomayed in Asharq Al-Awsat (U.K.). And that’s where they differ from the Muslim Brotherhood, which tried during its year in power to impose its vision alone, “with no compromise and no concessions.” By contrast, el-Sissi, in deposing Mursi, practiced inclusiveness, winning the support of Egypt’s intellectuals, the Coptic pope, the Salafists, and the opposition.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But the military may not let go so easily, said Marwan Bishara in AlJazeera.com. The Egyptian military has “economic interests, special privileges for its top brass, and a very powerful role to protect in any future political configuration of the country.” The coup has “further empowered the forces of the deep state,” those politicians, generals, and tycoons who were allied to the old regime. The revolution and the subsequent Islamist-led administration tried to strip them of their influence, and they retaliated by helping to incite the anti-Mursi demonstrations. These forces are now “coming back with vengeance.”

Take the long view, said Rami Khouri in The Daily Star (Lebanon). “Missteps in the early years of national sovereignty are pretty common.” Just look at the United States, which started out in 1776 with the Articles of Confederation but found it had to scrap them and enact a new constitution in 1789. That’s where Egypt is now—in “phase two” of its “sloppy transition from a military-led autocracy to a military-guided transition to a full-fledged, civilian-based democracy.” We could be watching 1789 happen again, this time on the Nile.