authoritarianism in MENA

To understand what's happening in Egypt, it's important to distinguish between at least two separate struggles that are playing out, the outcomes of which will shape Egypt's ongoing revolution for some time to come.The first is a factional conflict within the ruling elite

another, more critical struggle unfolding too, between those fighting to destroy the old authoritarian system that for decades has denied them political and economic agency, that plunders Egypt's public wealth in the name of private profiteers and arrests, tortures and kills those daring to defy it – and those seeking to protect it.

Morsi insisted he would reach out to all political factions and heal Egypt at this turbulent time; he promised consensus not partisanship, a constitution that would reflect the national will and not the private interests of the Brotherhood, a revolutionary pursuit of social justice and an end to state violence against its citizens.It was those promises that handed him the presidency: millions reluctantly gave Morsi their vote because they believed in his commitment to the revolution. He failed on every measure, and now – despite the cries of those who believe democracy involves nothing more than a single ballot twice a decade – many Egyptians are unwilling to hang around for another three years to hold him to account and get their revolution back on track.

The short explanation of what went wrong is that the Brotherhood – like most of the traditional opposition movements – is a product of the old political system, and as much a remnant of it as Mubarak himself. It failed to appreciate that the game has changed and instead continued playing largely by the old rules.

I’m not sure that it’s wise to dump Morsi – at least, not yet. If he’s forced out of office now, the Brotherhood will claim to have been robbed by anti-democratic forces – and that will create more problems for the future. But there’s still no sign, even after the Sunday protests, that he’s ready to make the necessary compromises – and for that reason he may have to go

What I didn’t expect, though, was that so many people would turn against the Brotherhood quite so soon.

The controversy surrounding the Syria conference pointed to a crippling flaw in the Morsi presidency: Though the constitution names Morsi as supreme commander of the armed forces, the military remains master of its own destiny and a rival source of authority to the country's first freely elected head of state.

For the army, the Syria rally had crossed “a national security red line” by encouraging Egyptians to fight abroad, risking creating a new generation of jihadists, said Yasser El-Shimy, analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“There is one thing we do know about the ideology of the military. That it sees itself as having a mission to the state rather than the constitution,”

One of the major challenges that faced Egypt and other Arab countries in the wake of their popular uprisings was to subordinate the will of military leaders to civilian rule. This has now been undone. Future governments in Cairo will not dare to defy the military nor try to limit its authority, a serious handicap to democratisation.

This controllable prosecutor-general, against which almost the entire prosecutorial corps protested and nearly succeeded in firing, was used quite clearly at will to go after the private media and the opposition as a direct extension of Morsi and the Brotherhood, while substantially legally shielding the Brotherhood at the same time.

In another breach of revolutionary consensus, Morsi and the Brotherood tightened control over state media and retained the nationally rejected role of information minister, already abolished briefly after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak. State-owned papers and channels were subjected to appointments of allied or controllable leaderships. The media often ran familiar propaganda-esque headlines that seemed taken out of the Mubarak days. Furthermore, the press did not provide neutral and balanced coverage of events, and state TV was almost always forced to host a Brotherhood guest on every talk show, or at the very least not host an opposition figure on his own. Reports of guest blacklists also began to surface once more. Charges of “insulting the president” and “contempt of religion” began to pile up against media figures, often made by Brotherhood allies rather than directly by the Brotherhood (though the presidency did press some charges before retracting them under local and international pressure). Morsi and the Brotherhood seemed to care very little about fixing the problematic legislative framework for media, and gradually appeared to find it handy, especially with a prosecutor-general that was under full control. 

Although the original claim was that the Shura Council would only rubber stamp consensus legislation until the lower house would be elected, it was turned into a full parliament. It discussed far-reaching and controversial drafts, including: a non-governmental organization law that was widely seen as capable of stifling civil society in Egypt; divisive electoral and political rights laws that were criticized as favoring the Islamists; and even a disastrous judicial reform law that would have axed around 3,500 existing judges in an already choking legal system. The latter draft was openly seen as a move to get rid of judges that were problematic to the Brotherhood’s expansionary plans, while there were wide fears of intentions to replace them with a new generation of more sympathetic judges or outright Brotherhood members.

Depending on one’s perspective, Egypt is either in a political limbo or an extended purgatory, with the devils long contained in its national Pandora’s box having been loosened from their chains. People are murdered like sheep now, obscurely and without fanfare, in the country’s protests, and women are gang-raped viciously by crowds of men who seek to mete out their darkest desires, violently, in public. It is as if everything in Egypt must now be performed by the mob, for the mob, in full view of everyone.

—it has been, throughout, the military that has allowed it all to happen

to the generals, at least, it is a country in the process of being rescued from a descent into hell by the all-seeing, all-wise, protective men in uniform