{"id":18040,"date":"2013-07-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brookings.alley.test\/research\/showdown-in-egypt\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T13:53:23","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T13:53:23","slug":"showdown-in-egypt","status":"publish","type":"opinion","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/opinion\/showdown-in-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"Showdown in Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"

With massive anti-government protests across Egypt on June 30 \u2013 a year to the day after Egyptians elected their first-ever civilian president \u2013 a diverse and decentralized movement has challenged President Mohammad Morsi\u2019s hold on power as never before. Hundreds of thousands were mobilized to take to the streets, with many storming and\u00a0burning down<\/a> the Cairo headquarters of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the end of the day, the president was given an ultimatum. The first \u201crevolutionary\u201d statement of Egypt\u2019s new grassroots Tamarod (rebel) movement demanded that Morsi leave within two days or face a march on the presidential palace. \u201cIn the name of 22 million citizens, we declare that Mohammad Morsi is no longer the legitimate President of Egypt.\u201d The protesters then appealed to \u201cthe institutions of the state, the army, the police, and the judiciary to side with the popular will.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The army has spoken, issuing an ultimatum of its own to Morsi: Address the protesters\u2019 demands or face a military solution to the crisis. As the day ended, Morsi\u2019s office declared that it had not been consulted prior to the army\u2019s statement, and tens of thousands of the president\u2019s supporters demonstrated in several cities simultaneously at midnight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So what will happen next? And what impact will the Tamarod movement and the army intervention have on Egypt\u2019s precarious democratization process?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The path to today\u2019s crisis was predictable. Morsi won the presidential election with only 51.7% of the vote, while the other 48.3% included very powerful forces, including figures from the Mubarak regime and their supporters. Opposition to Morsi hardened following the annulled November 2012 constitutional declaration<\/a>, by which he had sought sweeping powers \u2013 allegedly to protect the country\u2019s infant elected institutions against a politicized judiciary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The lack of tangible material gains for ordinary Egyptians also fueled public anger. All of the presidential candidates had made wild promises; but the absence of significant achievement, such as resolving the country\u2019s chronic shortages of gas and electricity, helped to fuel the massive anti-Morsi mobilization. Incompetence during a political transition has a high price.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But Morsi is not entirely without accomplishments or supporters. Last August, he culled the leaders of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). On the economic front, the Egyptian Central Bank\u2019s report<\/a>\u00a0for the period of July 2012 to March 2013 indicates that the balance-of-payments deficit fell from $11.2 billion to $2.1 billion, owing to rising tourism revenues and debt forgiveness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This improvement did not trickle down to ordinary citizens, and there was no effective media and communication strategy to capitalize on it. But Morsi\u2019s core supporters remain committed. Whereas only a few hundred showed up to support the fraudulently elected Mubarak during the revolution, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians rallied<\/a>\u00a0for two consecutive weeks in Rab\u2018a al-\u2018Adawiyya square, near the presidential palace, to express their solidarity with Morsi.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Morsi survives in office, he will have to rely on the army to guarantee his government\u2019s safety. He will also need a massive show of strength from his supporters. But this would mean returning the army to the center of politics \u2013 and thus sacrificing the gains from Morsi\u2019s imposition last August of greater civilian control. And the army\u2019s ultimatum indicates that the military is moving in the direction of a coup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mobilization of Morsi\u2019s Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist supporters is also risky. Indeed, the revolutionary step of steering once-armed Islamists toward electoral and constitutional politics could be reversed in ongoing power struggle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Morsi does not remain in power, much will depend on how he is removed. Reliance on street mobilization and army intervention to bring down an elected leader who has support on the ground is unlikely to lead to a positive outcome. On the contrary, that pattern \u2013 seen in Spain in 1936, Iran in 1953, Chile in 1973, Turkey in 1980, Sudan in 1989, and Algeria and Tajikistan in 1992 \u2013 usually leads to military dictatorships, civil wars, or both.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But there is also Charles de Gaulle\u2019s precedent of a peaceful exit by an elected president. The massive protests in France in 1968 led to an early parliamentary election, which de Gaulle\u2019s supporters won decisively. But de Gaulle later resigned of his own volition, over an issue of minor importance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The problem with this precedent is that Morsi does not have de Gaulle\u2019s background, and Egypt\u2019s chaotic political transition of 2013 is far from France\u2019s consolidated democracy of 1968. French Gaullists did not face persecution; several Egyptian opposition figures have already vowed that Morsi and the Muslim Brothers will. That raises the stakes of political survival considerably, especially given the absence of any credible guarantor of constitutional norms and behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Moreover, a possible replacement for Morsi is not very clear. Parts of the opposition speak of a transitional \u201cpresidential council.\u201d But that idea failed once already, during the SCAF\u2019s rule (February 2011-June 2012), owing partly to the lack of popular mobilization behind a uniting figure(s), but mostly because of the egos \u2013 indeed, megalomania \u2013 of the politicians involved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Morsi will almost certainly not be removed without the involvement of the army and the security establishment. And the winners will probably try their best to block the Islamist forces from a comeback, implying another cycle of no-holds-barred political \u2013 and perhaps physical \u2013 combat, in which democracy serves as a mask to legitimize the exclusion, and possibly the destruction, of one\u2019s political opponents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":26621,"template":"","class_list":["post-18040","opinion","type-opinion","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/18040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/opinion"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}