Latest from Egypt
Nov. 26th, 2012 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackhttp://www.juancole.com/2012/11/egypt-constitutional-crisis-morsi-to-meet-judges-as-weekend-clashes-leave-two-dead-hundreds-wounded.html
Do I have this right? After Mubarak was forced to resign, there was an essentially democratic election, though the candidates that did best were the current president, Morsi, and the previous prime minister under Mubarak.
Morsi won, and everyone in the west hoped that a government not dominated by the military would be a good thing, although people in the west didn't really want an explicitly Islamic candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now Morsi passed a bunch of laws that look like consolidating power and (probably) suppressing any dissent, and mass protests from everyone else broke out, leading to some deaths.
And the best we can hope for is that Morsi backs down and lets things drift along non-dictatorily, and we desperately hope it doesn't degenerate into another dictatorship, a putsch by the military factions, or slide into civil war. Is that an accurate (but extremely simplified) summary?
Do I have this right? After Mubarak was forced to resign, there was an essentially democratic election, though the candidates that did best were the current president, Morsi, and the previous prime minister under Mubarak.
Morsi won, and everyone in the west hoped that a government not dominated by the military would be a good thing, although people in the west didn't really want an explicitly Islamic candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now Morsi passed a bunch of laws that look like consolidating power and (probably) suppressing any dissent, and mass protests from everyone else broke out, leading to some deaths.
And the best we can hope for is that Morsi backs down and lets things drift along non-dictatorily, and we desperately hope it doesn't degenerate into another dictatorship, a putsch by the military factions, or slide into civil war. Is that an accurate (but extremely simplified) summary?
no subject
Date: 2012-11-26 12:47 pm (UTC)But it leaves out a really important detail: under Mubarak the military evolved into an entire parallel society and economy. Soldiers get their own supermarkets, homes, etc.
So as well as needing to stamp his authority on the military top brass, Morsi also has to keep happy the rank and file soldiery that is scared it's going to lose privileges. Conversely, even if he does have the will to dismantle that decades-old system, it can't be done overnight.
I don't know how Morsi can succeed. My hunch is he's literally a dead man walking. Possibly, he seized more power to gain more flexibility in either controlling the military or doing unpopular things to the civilian population to keep the military sweet, as circumstances demanded. Maybe he misjudged and thought he could do that without a new popular uprising…