[CNN]
Don't blame Muslim Brotherhood for Morsy power grab - CNN.com
By Tarek Masoud , Special to CNN
November 27, 2012 -- Updated 1711 GMT (0111 HKT)
CNN.com
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy waves to his supporters in front of the
presidential palace in Cairo on November 23.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy waves to his supporters in front of the
presidential palace in Cairo on November 23.
Editor's note: Tarek Masoud is an associate professor of public policy at
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
(CNN) -- Twenty years ago, Edward Djerejian, a former U.S. diplomat, famously
worried that Islamists would exploit democratic elections to come to power,
after which they would pull the democratic ladder up behind them. Instead of
one man, one vote, he said, Islamists wanted one man, one vote, one time.
Last week, Egypt's President Mohamed Morsy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood,
and his country's first democratically elected president, seemed to fulfill
Djerejian's grim prophecy.
In a series of unilateral amendments to Egypt's interim constitution, Morsy
declared that his word "is final and binding and cannot be appealed by any way
or to any entity," and that he is empowered to "take the necessary actions and
measures to protect the country and the goals of the revolution."
But, as shocking as Morsy's actions are, they do not prove that Islamists
cannot be democrats. Morsy's decision to grant himself unquestioned authority
was not the final, spectacularly public phase in some hitherto clandestine
Muslim Brotherhood plan to erect a holy autocracy. Instead, the Egyptian
president simply did what Egyptian presidents have been doing for more than 60
years that is, loosening institutional restraints on their authority in order
to more easily fulfill their agendas.
News: Is Morsy Egypt's next strongman?
That Morsy is an Islamist is largely irrelevant. It's likely that the
autocratic temptation would have seized Egypt's president regardless of his
party or ideological orientation. This is not only because Egypt has had a
distressingly long history of powerful executives, it's also because, at this
moment in Egypt's political history, there is no actor, institution or
organization able to keep the presidency in check.
Under such circumstances, even the most earnest democrats would find themselves
flirting with authoritarianism first in the name of the greater good, and
then later, when pretenses can be dropped, in the service of naked ambition.
Usually, presidential ambitions are tamed by legislatures, and this was to be
the case under Egypt's interim constitution. A parliament was elected in
January, but the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved the body once
it became clear that Morsy was on his way to being elected president.
Morsy stands by power grab
Egypt on the edge after Morsy power grab
Morsy under fire for expanding power
The ostensible reason for the dissolution was that the parliamentary election
law ran afoul of some foggy constitutional provision, but the real reason was
that Islamists dominated parliament, and the court feared that this Islamist
legislature, coupled with a Muslim Brotherhood president, would lead Egypt
irretrievably down the road to theocracy.
In the absence of an elected legislature, it was left to the Supreme Council of
the Armed Forces -- the consortium of generals who ruled Egypt for the 18
months following former leader Hosni Mubarak's overthrow -- to counteract the
presidency. But the Egyptian people and the generals had grown weary of each
other. Word in Cairo was that the septuagenarian minister of defense, Muhammad
Hussein Tantawi, wanted a way out, a "safe exit" in which he could live out his
days free of the indignities visited upon his old boss, who bounced between
prison and infirmary.
A bargain was worked out. The president clawed back the council's powers and
sent the minister of defense and the armed forces chief of staff into cossetted
retirement (while naming them presidential advisers). The political landscape
now lay prostrate before him.
Except for the judiciary, and particularly the SCC. To Morsy, the 17 men (and
one woman) who make up that body constitute a defiant remnant of the Mubarak
order. That a clash was inevitable was apparent from Morsy's first moments in
office, when his inauguration was delayed for several hours over his reluctance
to be sworn in before the outgoing head of the court.
Business: Morsy makes his power plays
When the president decreed that the dissolved parliament should return to work,
the judges shut him down. Later, he tried to fire Egypt's attorney general, a
Mubarak appointee. Again, he was told that this was outside his ken. Rumors
swirled that the SCC was planning to dissolve the second constituent assembly;
others reported that a court was about to rule the Muslim Brotherhood itself
illegal.
Morsy and his men point to these things and argue that he was forced to take
action. But what's remarkable is what the president didn't do. For all of his
complaining about SCC's dissolution of parliament's lower house, and for all
the damage that the decision did to Egypt's democratic transition, the
president has indicated that he will uphold it.
Essam el-Erian, deputy chairman of the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom
and Justice Party, has publicly called on Morsy to reinstate the parliament,
but a presidential spokesman has said that there are no plans to do so.
The president's reluctance to bring back the parliament further reinforces the
impression that his main aim is to expand the powers of his office, which he
probably believes is better able to put Egypt right than a raucous legislature
packed with unreliable Salafists and a fractious "liberal" wing.
Though the Muslim Brotherhood has generally fallen into line behind the
president, there are signs that at least some of its members are deeply
uncomfortable with what he has wrought. Muslim Brotherhood politician Ahmed
Fahmi, the speaker of the upper house of parliament and a relative of Morsy's,
was reported to have said, "We wish that the president had conducted a popular
referendum on the constitutional declaration, because what he has done has
divided the country between the secular and Islamic forces." (Fahmi has since
denied making the statement.)
Muhammad Abd al-Quddus, a Muslim Brotherhood member and a member of the board
of Egypt's journalists union, reportedly said, "despite my membership in the
Brotherhood, I am a son of the revolution for freedom. Therefore, I reject
unlimited powers for the president, regardless of the reasons and the duration."
Even some of the president's defenders have betrayed hints of ambivalence over
his radical decision. Muhammad al-Biltagi, secretary general of the Freedom and
Justice Party's Cairo branch, declared that "many have a right to be worried"
about the president's move to place his decisions above oversight, and he
called for a national dialogue to arrive at a solution that would preserve "the
right of the president to perform his duties with full authority without
political interference from Mubarak's Constitutional Court, as well as the
right of the political and social forces to receive guarantees against even
temporary presidential tyranny."
Today, the only check on Morsy's authority comes from the streets. And while
the protests against the president's decisions have been surprisingly robust,
Morsy has so far resisted making concessions. In a meeting with Egyptian
judges, he reassured them that he would limit his use of his new powers, but,
as of this writing, his decree still stands.
Though large protests are scheduled, the president may believe that he can
afford to wait them out. After all, a repeat of the January 25 scenario is
unlikely.
The opposition to the president, though significant, remains fractured and
uncoordinated, and in any case is far narrower than it was in 2011. The
military, which proved essential in removing Mubarak from power, has no
appetite for a repeat engagement with the responsibilities of governance, and
Morsy has more legitimacy at home and abroad than Mubarak did.
And Morsy may believe that the great, silent majority of Egyptians are behind
him. After all, Egypt's GDP is about an eighth of the United States', and a
greater percentage of Americans were literate during the Civil War than
Egyptians are today. The vast countryside is likely untroubled by the
president's constitutional maneuverings.
One might be tempted to ask what the United States, Egypt's greatest foreign
patron, can do to set that country on the right course. Some have suggested
withholding aid, canceling loans and other means of pressuring Morsy to step
back from the authoritarian ledge on which he now finds himself.
These measures may produce flurries of positive statements and signals in the
near term, but they won't change the fundamental alchemy of Egyptian politics.
One only need examine the example of Iraq, which, after almost a decade of
American tutelage has nonetheless glided into a form of dominant party
autocracy, to realize that genuinely democratic governance cannot be imposed,
especially on poor, underdeveloped countries.
None of this Egypt's tradition of executive dominance, its feeble
institutions, its weak political organizations or its enervated society is
particularly the fault of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In fact, if we are to take any lesson from the turmoil on the banks of the
Nile, it is not that Islamists can't be trusted with Egypt's presidency, it is
that no one can. Morsy may yet reverse course, but odds are that this will not
be the last time that an Egyptian leader tries to convince his people that he
must kill democracy in order to save it.
Follow
Join us at
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Tarek Masoud.
1
Comments »
Print
Email
More sharing
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Share this article inShare
------------------------------------
Post message: [email protected]
Subscribe : [email protected]
Unsubscribe : [email protected]
List owner : [email protected]
Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
