Yes, I’m sorry. I know that the media have been discussing nothing else for over 24 hours, but I feel it’s important to join in, on this occasion: what’s going on in Egypt?
I can’t help feeling uneasy that barely a year after President Morsi was comfortably elected as the first legitimate President, he was deposed, not by the people but by the military with popular support. However, we all felt uneasy as Morsi awarded himself increasingly far-reaching powers that not even Mubarak had. We all felt uneasy when the secular republic that existed under the previous dictatorship was replaced with one that leaned too heavily on religious viewpoints. And of course, we have to remember that Morsi was only elected due to the fragmentation of the democratic vote being such that he was the less unpalatable candidate in the run-off. The truth is, true democracy only momentarily existed after the 2011 revolution.
Consequently, the coup is not such a clear cut defeat of a legitimate government. I could examine the question of whether it is democratic for the army to remove an elected administration if the majority support the move, but that is virtually a philosophical debate. Instead, I’d ask what will make things different this time round. Both the Egyptian people and international observers seem confident that the head of the Army, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is going to stand by his programme of power transfer that he made in his televised address yesterday night. There will be a revised Constitution and fresh parliamentary and presidential elections. But if the Muslim Brotherhood leads an islamist coalition that perpetuates this abuse of power, then the public will have simply made the situation worse. If the true democratic vote remains as divided as it was last time, then dictatorship beckons.
The issue with the Arab Spring, together with the Occupy movement and the Brazilian protestors, is that the millions of people who have taken to the streets for one reason or another collectively lack an organised leadership or any representatives. Without a clear voice, the efforts of the people will not be as effective as they could be. It doesn’t look like the Egyptian protestors have learnt this lesson, though.
