Egypt: Mursi sets himself up as Pharaoh

Has Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi “saved or stolen Egypt’s revolution?” asked Nour Samaha in AlJazeera.com. His decision last week to fire the country’s general prosecutor and “assign himself power over the legislative and executive branches” has sparked days of demonstrations and soul-searching among Egyptians who supported the revolution. Backers of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood point out that firing the prosecutor was a key demand of that revolution. They say they believe Mursi when he claims to be taking ultimate power only temporarily. Others are skeptical, even frightened. They fear the revolution “has just been hijacked.”

It’s not what he did, it’s how he did it, said Dina Ezzat in Al-Ahram (Egypt). Many Egyptians understood Mursi’s need to “marginalize the Mubarak-era judge who had been defying him” from day one—the same judge who outrageously refused to rule against any of those who brutally attacked demonstrators during the revolution. They might have even let Mursi protect the committee writing the constitution had he not made his decision “irrevocable and immune against appeal before any court of law.” Instead, pretty much everyone is against him now, including groups that have nothing else in common. All he has left is the support of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing—the Freedom and Justice Party—and Islamists such as the Salafis.

They’re the only people he really cares about, said Hesham Sallam in Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt). He cloaked his power grab in “the promise of vengeance for the revolution’s martyrs.” But his real aim is to cement the authority of his own Muslim Brotherhood—both in the presidency and in the future constitution. Egypt risks a “return to Mubarak-style presidency, without even the legal cosmetics that the previous regime employed to justify its authoritarian ways.” After all, it isn’t just prosecutorial incompetence or corruption that has protected the security officials who killed revolutionaries. It’s also the “absence of any meaningful reform inside military and civilian security agencies” since Mursi took power. “Mursi has clearly taken sides, and it is not the side of the revolution.”

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That should surprise no one, said Tamer Wagih, also in Al-Masry Al-Youm. The Muslim Brotherhood opposed the Mubarak regime, but it is not a revolutionary movement. Its support comes from “the more backward areas, where anger against modernization mingles with conservative tendencies seeking to legislate ethics.” Saving Egypt from the “Brotherhood’s dictatorship” may be more difficult than toppling Mubarak, because this time around, the revolutionaries can’t count on all of Mursi’s opponents, which include elements of the old regime.

It’s not too late for Mursi to turn back toward democracy, said The Daily Star (Lebanon) in an editorial. With pro- and anti-Mursi forces massing in the streets, Egypt is now “just a short distance from civil war.” If Mursi isn’t careful, his next step might “throw the country into violence and uncertainty.”