Mohammed Morsi’s victory over Ahmed Shafik in the Egyptian presidential election is a political triumph for the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned organization for most of the years since the country became a republic in 1953. It is likewise an important victory for Egyptian and Middle East democracy. Having edged perilously close to the brink of political chaos in recent weeks, due to repeated bungling of the transition process, Egypt has taken a very significant stride forward.

Morsi and his group have earned a substantial role in Egyptian public life. The Muslim Brotherhood has borne the brunt of state repression throughout the regimes of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. Its leaders and members persevered against difficult odds. They managed to create a strong grassroots movement that provided social services and gave a voice to the voiceless. They provided some hope during long, dark years when Egyptian presidents offered none. In the face of intolerable state violence spanning decades, the Brothers remained tolerant. They eschewed violence and exhibited super human patience.

Thus, for Morsi, a U.S.-educated engineer, and the Brotherhood, the results are a spectacular political achievement, attached with profound symbolism. After 60 years of military rule upholding secular values, Egypt has elected the first civilian president in its history, and its first Islamist president, too. Morsi’s victory is testimony to the Brotherhood’s ability to mobilize Egyptians against a deeply entrenched political system, and to convince Egyptians that its candidate was the most capable of taking the helm after Mubarak’s removal from power. If it rises to its responsibilities, the Brotherhood can be the hope of Egypt and of the Arab Spring.

The reason why Morsi’s win is also a triumph for Egyptian and Arab democracy is because of the critical, historic choice it represents. When Egyptians went to the polls in the June 16-17 runoff election, they were not primarily voting between a military candidate and an Islamist candidate. They were choosing between the past and the future: a continuation of the 60-year-old Egyptian military regime, or a new system built on genuine democratic participation.

Shafik is a man of doubtless abilities, having served as air force commander, minister of civil aviation, and, finally, as Mubarak’s last prime minister. Yet, Shafik’s resume was more a liability than an asset in a country raising thundering demands for change. The millions who chose Shafik wished that his iron fist and close ties to the military could restore stability. His supporters are disappointed by the results, but that is nothing compared to the rage that would have been expressed by millions of Egyptians demanding an end to six decades of military rule if Shafik had won. At worst, the perception of an election stolen by the military might have edged Egypt toward an Algeria scenario; that country experienced a terrible civil war triggered in 1991 when the military abruptly canceled elections Islamists were poised to win.

By contrast, the Morsi victory is the kind of outcome that elections in a democracy are supposed to produce-a winner who finds himself in a political arena that promotes and requires negotiation, compromise, concession and conciliation for the greater good of the nation. During the previous era, when Mubarak regularly received 90 percent of the votes, elections were nothing more than a farcical means of legitimizing the continuation of a state security regime. Any negotiation with other sectors of society- it occurred rarely-was on the regime’s terms. That is what led to the absolute ossification of Egyptian life, and, eventually, a revolution.

Instead, Morsi and the Brotherhood will find themselves in perpetual negotiation with all of Egypt’s players-with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Salafists, Coptic Christians, liberals, and even with Shafik and his supporters. The process formally began last week, when Morsi announced the formation of a national political front and proposed the establishment of a national unity government. These moves underline the Brotherhood’s understanding of democratic concepts like consensus building and inclusiveness.

It is clear to most Egyptians that Morsi is doomed to fail if he turns out to be a president who represents only the Brothers.  Or, if he thinks the Brotherhood could or should somehow hijack a revolution that involves a wide cross section of Egyptians. Many Egyptians have serious and valid questions about the Brotherhood’s abilities, policies, and intentions-on issues from women’s rights and the role of religion in the state to readiness for foreign investment and other forms of cooperation with outsiders. (Let’s not forget, though, the problems Egyptians had with the former regime that led them to revolt last year-political repression, police torture, corruption, appalling medical care, horrendous education system, the list goes on.)

The importance of representing all Egyptians can’t be lost on Morsi or his group’s strategists. In the parliamentary elections earlier this year, the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, garnered an impressive 10.1 million votes. In the first round of presidential balloting just five months later, however, Morsi, the Brotherhood candidate, won only 5.7 million-a downward slump indicating strong disillusionment with the Islamists’ performance in office. If we suppose that those 5.7 million voters constitute the Brotherhood’s core of diehard support, then Morsi’s 13.2 million total in the runoff election means that he gained the backing of 7.7 million Egyptians who can easily desert the Brotherhood and vote for an alternative the next time.

Morsi will need all the negotiating and consensus building skills he can muster in the weeks and months ahead. Despite Morsi’s victory-and  SCAF’s evident and necessary acquiescence in allowing it to stand-Egypt’s revolution is hardly finished. The ruling generals are showing extreme reluctance to hand over power to elected civilians by July 1 as they once pledged to do. In the midst of the presidential campaigning, SCAF enforced a court ruling dissolving the Islamist-controlled parliament, issued a decree granting the military executive powers and sharply curbing the authority of the new president, and gave itself a central role in approving a new constitution being drafted by a 100-member constituent assembly. Morsi’s challenge is to use his powerful mandate as Egypt’s first popularly elected leader to guide all Egyptians, including the reluctant generals, into a democratic future.

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

Scott MacLeod is managing editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs and is a professor in the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo

The ongoing political developments in Syria and Egypt are important for many things, including democratic transitions, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, the quest for social justice and others. One issue, however, that has been highlighted in these two countries has been perhaps the central political dynamic of the modern Arab since its creation after World War One. This is the struggle between military officers and civilian politicians for control of the institutions of government.

Syria and Egypt today reflect two very different examples of this struggle in its most acute form, with both sides battling with all their might to defeat the other. This is neither new nor an isolated matter. The civilian-military struggle has defined the Arab world since the 1930s, and it occurs in different forms across the entire region. Security agencies that dominate government decision-making in the Arab world represent the single most destructive force that has made a mockery of both stable state-building and credible citizenship. This is why the battle for control of power in Syria and Egypt today is so intense.

The first military coup d’etat in modern Arab history occurred in Iraq in 1936, when General Bakr Sidqi and two politicians (Hikmat Sulayman and Abu Timman) overthrew the government of Yasin al Hashimi. After that, especially after the 1948 debacle that saw Israel defeat Arab armies, military coups have been a regular occurrence. In the 1970s, the flow of massive oil income throughout the region allowed two other things to happen: The modern Arab security state was able to cement itself and dominate all aspects of life, and, officers who assumed power (such as Hafez Assad in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Zein el Abedine Ali in Tunisia, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and Husni Mubarak in Egypt) remained in power for periods ranging from 25 to 42 years, either on their own or by bequeathing power to their sons.

We have experienced 76 years of this ugly legacy of soldiers and intelligence officers running our countries, without their having either the preparation or the legitimacy to do so, and generally with catastrophic results. Entire economies have been shattered and gutted; tens of millions of young people cannot find gainful employment, because their public education systems turned them into mindless incompetents. The institutions of state have been transformed into hollow shells of their former nation-building stature, and civil servants often become agents of mass petty corruption and inefficiency. Disparities between rich and poor have widened sharply, as family- and crony-based circles of wealth surrounding ruling families have expanded everywhere in the region. Major national challenges related to economic expansion, social equity, educational reform, environmental protection, health care and other such basic needs have been given lip-service at best. The result is that the majority of Arab citizens have had to endure a degrading combination of national mediocrity and personal vulnerability that they are totally helpless to change.

The widespread and continuing Arab uprisings, in the face of brutal government responses, are explained in large part by the determination of ordinary citizens to end this miserable situation, salvage their statehood and citizenship, and shift to a new condition in which citizens play a direct role in shaping government institutions and defining public policies. In Egypt the old men with guns seek to maintain their perpetual control of state power by manipulating the courts, the parliament and the election system, while in Syria the ruling military establishment around the Assad family seeks to do the same thing through the continuous use of vicious force against civilians. The determination of the civilian populations to continue their struggles against their military masters, even at the risk of death, is a sign of just how awful it feels to live in an Arab country where soldiers and clandestine security agents tell you what to read, what to say, what to think, what to study, and even what to feel in your heart.

They have gone too far, especially after 76 long years, and the harder they try to stay in power, the more fiercely their citizens confront and challenge them. Three successive generations of Arabs have been numbed, insulted and dehumanized by this legacy of home-grown political brutality; the fourth generation has made it known that it will not quietly endure this mistreatment, and has risen up in mass revolt to end the rule of incompetent soldiers, their criminal associates, and their insatiably greedy families.

I am firmly convinced that this is the single most important of the multiple contests now taking place across the Arab world. Until civilians with populist legitimacy assume oversight of their military and security agencies, the Arab world will remain the global laggard and laughing stock that it has become over the last three generations.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2012 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

The developments in Egypt over the past few days have thrown what had been a confused set of institutional arrangements into even greater disarray. The Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) declared the parliamentary elections unconstitutional, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) announced a supplementary constitutional declaration with no apparent public input. On top of that, the first presidential election since the fall of Mubarak was held.

To make things a bit more confusing, statements have been attributed to military leaders that are at variance with the text of their own declaration. For instance, in a news conference, SCAF members reportedly promised the incoming president that he would have the authority to appoint a defense minister, even though that authority was explicitly removed by the supplementary constitutional declaration.

The original constitutional declaration from March 2011 had all kinds of loopholes and ambiguities to begin with; the decision to tinker with its provisions this month has widened those loopholes considerably. Many of the gaps are likely to be filled in political practice—often unilaterally by the SCAF according to its needs of the moment. Indeed, the overriding effect of events of the past week has been to contain and sideline the role of elected institutions in Egypt’s transition.

Only the presidency remains (assuming the victor is allowed to take office) a democratic structure, and its authority has been clipped. The current Constituent Assembly was chosen by an elected parliament and thus also has some democratic legitimacy, but its existence is threatened, and, even if it survives, it will have to operate under the watchful eyes of other actors.

What follows is an attempt to clarify where matters stand today—and where gaps still remain.
The SCAF

The SCAF has strengthened its position in a number of ways. First, it has ensured that it will continue its political role after the inauguration of the president. There will be no return to the barracks at the end of this month, despite the promise of a symbolic ceremony in which the military leadership will hand power over to the president. Most important, the SCAF’s legislative role—in abeyance since the parliament began to meet in January—has been restored.

Second, it has declared itself completely autonomous from civilian oversight and given itself free rein in military affairs.

Third, it has granted itself a new, strong voice in the constitution-writing process.

And finally, the SCAF has augmented its positions through institutionalizing an internal security role as well as granting itself a veto over any declaration of war. The first step is likely to be far more important; the second is striking and unusual but also likely primarily of symbolic importance for now.

The military’s internal security role amounts to a standing authorization to the president and the SCAF to invoke martial law. And the SCAF has coupled its supplementary constitutional declaration with a provision for a defense council—a preexisting body—that, while headed by the president, will give the military the dominant voice.

The full extent of the SCAF’s authority is not always clear. Its executive authority is strong but not absolute under the emerging system, and it will turn over some significant authority to the president, especially in administrative and domestic affairs. It is likely that true clarity will come only in practice. If the past week is any indication, ambiguities will be resolved in accordance with the SCAF’s shifting preferences and political will. For instance, its budgetary role is ambiguous—while the non-military budget is not one of those areas of authority explicitly retained by the SCAF, the SCAF has asserted a legislative role, and the budget is, in fact, a law. This would seem to give the SCAF a platform to claim budgetary authority, but there are no preliminary indications yet of any inclination to use it.

The SCAF issued the supplementary constitutional declaration as a decree, not allowing the elected president or the Egyptian people to have a voice in the changes. That suggests the generals are not comfortable with the democratic process.

The Presidency

When the new president is sworn in, he will have considerable authority over domestic politics and administration on paper. But exercising authority in practice in most areas will likely require him to negotiate with the SCAF—especially since the SCAF has just granted the new president the gift of a general to oversee fiscal and administrative affairs for the presidency. Complicating his life still further, the president might also have to negotiate with other important actors, such as the security services.

The president will appoint the cabinet with the exception of the minister of defense. While the position of minister of defense is reserved for the current head of the SCAF, there are no apparent legal or constitutional restrictions on the new president’s choice for all other positions. In the absence of a parliament, the president will be able to make these appointments without any parliamentary oversight—giving him an even freer hand on paper.

But there will be significant political pressures connected with cabinet formation. For instance, in recent years the minister of justice has generally been a judge and the minister of interior has long come out of the security apparatus. It might be possible to violate the first tradition, though it might seem wiser for the new president to placate what has been a fairly active and somewhat aggrieved judiciary. It would be extremely daring and politically risky to violate the second tradition by appointing a civilian interior minister, a step many political reformers have insisted is necessary to begin the overhaul of the abusive and unaccountable state security apparatus.

More generally, with the SCAF always lurking in the background, the president is unlikely to feel free to select a cabinet of his own choosing. The cabinet and individual ministers have considerable authority to make policy as well as issue regulations and decisions. Without any parliamentary oversight or accountability, the only way to challenge any act by a minister or the cabinet may be to file a suit in the administrative courts (which act with varying speed) or to appeal to the SCAF to issue legislation reversing the action.

In the past, the president’s assent has been necessary for parliamentary legislation to become law. That requirement seems to carry over to the new system, but there is some tension in the various provisions on this issue. In one clause, the SCAF seems to have grabbed all legislative authority for itself, but another requires presidential assent for legislation and a third allows the cabinet to draft legislation (whether to forward to the SCAF or the president for further consideration is unclear). In comments to the press, SCAF members did suggest that the generals themselves would be forwarding legislation to the president for approval.

Egypt has been dominated by the presidency for so long that there are a whole myriad of structures, commissions, and procedures that run through the presidency and give the president a strong potential role. These are still part of the legal order.

The term of the presidency is fixed in the March 2011 constitutional declaration at four years (renewable once). Logically, if the president is taking office under a temporary constitution, it might be appropriate to hold new elections once a new constitution is in place. The SCAF has hinted that the new president will only be a transitional figure. But such an arrangement is hardly inevitable, and if that was what the SCAF intended last year, it is not clear why it allowed a four-year term limit in the text of the constitutional declaration.

The only plausible explanation is that the SCAF changed its mind—or is now reserving the right to change its mind depending on what it thinks of the president. There is no clear way of resolving the issue. The permanent constitution could address it, though the SCAF’s newfound assertiveness may lead it to insist on its own answer.

Constituent Assembly

Before the parliament was found unconstitutional, it had elected a Constituent Assembly as required by the constitutional declaration. Actually, it had done so twice—the first body was struck down in March by an administrative court and a new one was formed just days before the presidential election. The parliament had also passed a law governing formation of the body, but that law was never approved by the SCAF.

The second assembly has met once. In an environment in which judges have played an active role, the body took the astute step of electing the most senior judge in the country (one reputed to have some Islamist inclinations) as its president. Yet its days could well be numbered.

Previously, the assembly was expected to submit its work directly to the people with no other review or oversight stipulated. Now a variety of actors—the president, the head of the SCAF, the prime minister, the Supreme Council of Judicial Organizations, or one-fifth of the members of the Constituent Assembly itself—can ask for any provision of the assembly’s draft constitution to be reconsidered before submission to the people. If the Constituent Assembly does not change its mind, the objecting party can resort to the Supreme Constitutional Court for final and binding determination of whether the challenged provision is consistent with the goals of the revolution, the higher interests of the country, or the basic principles of past constitutions. In an earlier piece, I used the phrase “constitutional obscenity” to refer to the extreme vagueness of these standards, the absurdity of holding a new constitution accountable to older ones, and the assignment of final and absolute interpretive authority to an unelected judicial body formed under the old regime.

Now the SCAF has taken the audacious step of allowing itself to form a new Constituent Assembly. If the operations of the current assembly are obstructed and the body is unable to fulfill its duties, the SCAF will form a new assembly within one week—all on its own. In such a case, the new body will have only three months to complete its work, rather than the six months that the current assembly has. This is a period of time that would virtually bar serious public debate.

An obstacle in the path of the current assembly is possible and even likely to emerge. A lawsuit has been filed against the sitting assembly on grounds that members of the parliament voted some of their own members into the body. Although that might sound normal and innocuous, the first assembly was disbanded on the basis of a similar argument.

In all these ways, the constitutional process has been modified in order to make it more accountable to the institutions and principles of the old order than to the Egyptian people.

The Parliament

I have analyzed the argument over whether the parliament has been dissolved in an earlier piece. While those who claim the court has no right to dissolve the parliament do have plausible (if hardly overwhelming) arguments, they have virtually no political chance of success.

The justices of the Constitutional Court gave conflicting signals about how their ruling on the parliamentary election law applies to the upper house of the Egyptian parliament, and that body appears to still be viable. But a legal challenge has been entered against it, so its future is still uncertain.

The supplementary constitutional declaration states that the next set of parliamentary elections will take place one month after the new constitution is approved, effectively suspending parliament until after the transition is complete and oddly suggesting that the current temporary document rather than the final constitution defines when elections are to be held. The amended declaration also allows for a new law to be promulgated now (presumably by the SCAF with presidential assent) to govern those elections, again extending the legal effects of the SCAF’s authority into the operation of the new constitutional order.

The Supreme Constitutional Court

The Supreme Constitutional Court has been placed in a powerful position as guardian, final arbiter, and effective definer of the vaguely defined principles the new constitution must embody.

The justices of the SCC have been referred to in press accounts as “Mubarak appointees,” something that is accurate but sometimes misleading. There is no doubt that the current court was fully formed under the old regime, but its autonomy varied considerably over time and it was never a direct creature of the president. It is true that its reputation and record for independent action has declined over the past decade. I generally share Tamir Moustafa’s views that the court has become politically weaker in recent years.

The current composition of the court is a bit mixed. The SCC chief justice was a direct presidential appointee, although he actually recused himself from the case concerning the disputed candidacy of Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister appointed by Hosni Mubarak. He thus can hardly be held responsible for the ruling that allowed Shafiq to run for president despite former ties to the Mubarak regime. The other justices were generally nominated by the court itself and then approved by the president. That has made for some variety and independence in the past. My general impression is that the current court is actually a very diverse body.

The law governing the SCC was changed by the SCAF last summer to allow the court to select its own president from among the three most senior current members. The effect was to insulate the SCC from all other actors though also perhaps to inculcate however subtly a sense that the SCAF (and not the parliament) was the best protector of the judiciary. The new chief justice—a judge on the SCC since 1991—will take over next month.

What justices on the SCC tend to share, despite diverse orientations, is a strong sense of mission to the law and abstract constitutional principles. In a sense, their attitude is analogous to that of the SCAF, though the comparison might offend some of them: senior judges, like senior generals, see themselves as guardians of the public interest and the interests of the state, and therefore as above politics, democratic mechanisms, and accountability. The parliament that was seated in January had offended the SCC’s sensibilities quite deeply by criticizing the chief justice and by proposing legislation that would have deprived the court of some of its authority and autonomy.

It is not quite clear how the court will interpret the vague principles placed in its care for the constitution-drafting process. While many Egyptian judicial authorities work to hew closely to formalistic interpretations of legal texts, the SCC, given its mandate, has shown some comfort departing from narrow textualism and undertaking expansive readings of general constitutional principles. However, the task here is so novel that there is no sure indication of how it would use its authority if called upon.

Nathan Brown is a non-resident senior associate in the Middle East Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.

From Guide to Egypt’s Transition, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org/2012/06/19/the-egyptian-political-system-in-disarray

The power grab in the past week by the Egyptian military and lingering Hosni Mubarak-era establishment, operating through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), is such a blatant attempt to prevent a truly democratic and republican system of government from taking root in the country that it cannot possibly succeed. It will generate tremendous counter forces in society from tens of millions of ordinary and politicized Egyptians, who insist on achieving the promise of the January 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak, and ushered in a slow transition to a more democratic system of governance.

The SCAF and its Mubarak-era allies managed within a few days to go against the two strongest sentiments that have driven ordinary Egyptians for the past 18 months: First is the desire to see the old guard that tormented the citizenry through authoritarian abuse of power held accountable, punished, and kept out of power in the new democratic Egypt; and, second is the desire to see the military establishment oversee an orderly transition by turning over power to an elected, legitimate president and parliament. The SCAF’s old generals and colonels sharply offended and provoked much of the population, by heavy-handedly trying to keep the legitimately elected Muslim Brotherhood out of power in both the parliament and the presidency, and signaling that it will only turn over some powers to a civilian establishment, while retaining most powers for itself, and for good measure keeping control of the process of writing a new constitution.

The SCAF has succumbed to the same disease that is challenging, and in places bringing down, dictators and authoritarian military rulers across the Arab world: its members believe that only they know what is best for the people of Egypt, and they alone will determine how political power and decision-making authority are dispersed in the country. This megalomanial and arrogant sense of all-knowing wisdom caused the SCAF members to overplay their hand and issue a series of imperial-style edicts giving themselves supreme power that overrides the authority of the parliament, the president and the courts. This display of monumental political greed, shortsightedness and sheer stupidity will now send Egypt into a protracted period of political struggle, in which various political forces in the country compete openly for power and legitimacy. The critical issue now is to see which combination of actors can enjoy both power and legitimacy at the same time.

This will take some time. Most basic elements of the Egyptian political system are undefined or nonexistent. We do not know if the current parliament will actually be dissolved, as the supreme constitutional court decreed last week that it should be. We will not know officially for a few days who is the winner of the presidential election. We do not know the powers that the president and a new parliament will enjoy. We do not know how long SCAF’s military rulers will remain in power, or whether they will retain some, or many, powers if they do turn over political authority to an elected civilian administration. And we do not know what kind of constitutional commission will write a new constitution, when that document will come into force, whether it will be credibly ratified by the population, and how it apportions power, rights, responsibility and accountability.

Egypt this week is a country in post-revolutionary turmoil and deep transition, without a governance system. But it will be fine. It will emerge from this transitional moment in better shape than it has been at any time in the past two generations — because the Egypt that will configure itself during the coming phase will enjoy the unprecedented quality of being a country that has been defined and shaped by its own people.

We know very well from polls, qualitative research and a chat with any stranger you choose on a stroll along the Nile that Egyptians respect their armed forces and are deeply devout (mostly Muslims, with some Christians). They appreciate the values, order and certitude that emanate from a strong military and religious dictates. We also know, however, that they do not want their country to be ruled by military or religious officials. The Muslim Brotherhood indicated in recent weeks, during the presidential runoff election, that it understood this; so it assured Egyptians that a Muslim Brotherhood presidential victory would open the door to a leadership that included all quarters and elements of the population. SCAF did not understand the same lesson; it assumed that the trust it enjoyed was endless, and allowed it to run amok and grab power for itself and the officer corps for generations to come.

The enormous power of populist legitimacy that was unleashed in January 2011 and toppled the government will now regroup and reassert itself in more complex and institutionalized political forms than merely demonstrating in public squares. Through its childish power grab, SCAF guarantees that the slow political development of Egypt will speed up dramatically, mainly in opposition to the perception that a transitional military council is trying to transform itself into a permanent military junta. That will not happen, as the coming weeks and months will demonstrate.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of 

The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2012 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

The Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision Thursday to dissolve the elected parliament and allow former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik to contest the presidential election this weekend will generate heated debate — but essentially the decisions strike me as new building blocks in the complex and erratic process that has been underway in Egypt for the past 17 months: the slow, steady reconfiguration and relegitimization of a rotten political system. Despite some turbulence ahead, this is a healthy development, for several reasons.

The most significant aspect of these court decisions may be the growing role of the judiciary in Egypt’s political transition and rebirth. This is a critical element in any credible political system that aims to be democratic, pluralistic and based on the rule of law.

We now also have more clarity in the five main political groups that contest power and seek to shape the future governance system in Egypt:

• The military that remains in formal control of power and will maintain a behind-the-scenes role for years to come;
• Old guard Mubarak loyalists and their many supporters who crave calm and jobs, and who will vote for Ahmed Shafik for president;
• The Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and other Islamists, who are a leading but also a declining political force, as witnessed by their sharp drop in votes between the parliamentary elections last year and this year’s first round presidential vote;
• The remnants of the revolutionary youth and associated progressive and civil society groups who spearheaded the populist overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, but were not organized enough to gain any serious political power in the subsequent elections;
• The many centrist, Nasserite, secular and liberal political parties that may represent nearly half the electorate, but that splintered their votes and did not gain meaningfully in the parliamentary or first round presidential election.

The mass media and civil society organizations are also active players in the political process. The court’s decisions effectively allow all these forces to start again in their contest for power in the two main institutions of state power — the parliament and the presidency. The fact that voters in the presidential run-off election last weekend had to choose between Mubarak-era Shafik and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi angers many Egyptians who dislike both these poles of the political spectrum. Yet it would be a mistake to analyze or judge the impact of the court rulings mainly on the basis of what they mean for the presidential election.

This is because the presidency is only one element in a dynamic universe of political governance institutions that continue to take shape and define their relationships and relative powers. These include the presidency, the elected lower house of parliament, the less powerful upper house, the 100-member appointed commission that will write a new constitution, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that still retains full power, and, the judiciary that has now come to life again, even though its decisions are controversial and many of its institutions are manned by Mubarak-era appointees who are used to being guided by the military. The role, authority and credibility of each of these institutions evolve regularly these days, and will continue to do so for years to come.

This reflects the fact that Egypt has now entered into a new phase of national life in which power increasingly is contested politically, and in the public sphere, where actors come and go, and political arenas do the same. The public itself — the more than 80 million citizens of Egypt — remain an active political player in two ways. They can shape events according to how they vote in the various elections yet to come, and, they can exert pressure by taking to the streets in massive demonstrations when they feel that any one of the above parties is trying to monopolize power and return the country to the kind of military rule it suffered for 60 years. If the Mubarak-era old guard, perhaps with the quiet support of the military, works its way back into power through elections, we would likely see a recurrence of the mass demonstrations that started this democratic transition in January-February 2011. This is especially likely if, as many critics believe, the court decisions this week were a disguised military coup against legitimately elected civilian powers.

The most dangerous development this week was the justice ministry’s quiet decision Wednesday allowing security officers to arrest civilians suspected of crimes that are wildly vague in their definition, including acts deemed “harmful to the government” or “obstructing traffic,” effectively reinstating elements of the emergency laws that had lapsed a few weeks ago after decades in force. The turbulence continues, as do the reconstitution of a gutted polity, and the rebirth of a people who had been put in a stupor by their political and military elite.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Copyright © 2012 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

On Thursday, Egyptian politicians did something astonishing: they reached an agreement. A military ultimatum—agree within 48 hours on a formula for choosing the 100 people who will write the country’s next constitution, or expect a fresh constitutional declaration, the contents of which you may dislike—ended a long impasse. But the outcome sadly reinforces the narrative that only the military can press self-serving civilian politicians to fulfill their duties to the nation. More importantly, the “thirteenth-hour” agreement (the politicians actually missed the deadline) nonetheless throws Egypt’s already contorted transition deeper into confusion and uncertainty.

The original plan was for the constitutional assembly to finish its work and put a constitution to a referendum ahead of presidential elections. When that failed, many political actors expected the military to issue an updated constitutional declaration before the presidential vote. The military has now asked parliament to convene to choose the assembly members on June 12. Few expect the assembly to finish its work, or for a new interim constitutional declaration to be issued, before a president is elected in therunoff scheduled for June 16-17. But as one participant at Thursday’s meeting said, “The only thing certain now is that absolutely nothing is certain. Anything can happen.”

Particularly on questions where there is little agreement, a little ambiguity can be useful. And leaving the future constitutional assembly time to debate seems wise. But that the generals appear willing to conclude the presidential election, and their direct rule, under such constitutionally ambiguous circumstances is perhaps a sign of how confident they are that former Air Force Commander Ahmed Shafik will win.

Had the military attempted to isolate itself from presidential and civilian control, perhaps even under the guise of retreating from politics, and to assert that this arrangement must be enshrined in future constitutions, or supersede them, as its legal minds first attempted to do one year ago, this might have signaled that the military was willing even to prepare for the possibility of a victory for Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi.

The military might yet be able to countenance a Brotherhood win provided the military is insulated from the president, parliament, and civilian courts. Such a deal, including the presidency, the cabinet (though perhaps with restrictions, such as on civilian ministers of interior and defense), and the parliament—in effect, all the levers of government—would perhaps be too sweet for the Brotherhood to resist. The military, in that scenario, would perhaps hope that they were giving the eager Brotherhood all the rope it needed, that if the Brotherhood could take the fall for the next five rotten years, the country might at last be rid of them. Former Supreme Guide Mohammed Mahdi Akef, in a sentiment shared by at least some middle managers, said he prayed the Brotherhood would lose.

For the moment, there is no indication that the Brotherhood or the military are moving toward such an arrangement. Even the current, Brotherhood-dominated parliament is on thin ice, awaiting a verdict on whether the law governing the elections that produced it is constitutional.

For the military, such an experiment would entail risks for an institution that is naturally particularly risk-adverse when it comes to its own future—which it conflates, with some justification, with that of the state. For should the Brotherhood be handed all the rope it needs to hang itself, it could just as easily fashion the noose with someone else in mind. “The Muslim Brotherhood are not idiots,” former intelligence head Omar Suleiman recently told a columnist for a Saudi daily.

If the military does not yet try to score an end run ahead of the polls by attempting to cement its immunity, independence, and, perhaps, decision-making role, by fiat, or with the hurried imprimatur of a constitutional assembly, it will signal that it views Shafik as a shoo-in. Indeed, Shafik might win even a fair election—he appears to have so far managed to pick up more of the center than has his opponent in their respective second-round pivots from their respective bases, though a great many, perhaps an absolute majority of, demoralized voters will abstain or spoil their ballots.

Morsi and the Brotherhood tentatively threw in their lot with the mass protests in Cairo, Alexandria, and elsewhere that erupted following the June 2 verdict in the trial of Hosni Mubarak, his sons, and various of their henchmen. But those protests found their wellspring first in the disenchantment of an urban electorate that wants neither someone from the old regime nor someone from the Brotherhood, and so are difficult for the Brotherhood to exploit for electoral gain.

In Cairo, after it was announced that he won the first round of elections in the city, almost everyone said they voted for charismatic Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi—whether or not, one suspects, they had. Some of Morsi’s billboards have also been torn down. His painful flirtation with both Sabahi and Brotherhood defector Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh has not yet been consummated. Brotherhood members and those urging a boycott scuffle amid the tea-vendors of Tahrir.

Running the numbers on hypothetical electoral outcomes is now a favorite sport for Egypt-watchers. Both candidates won roughly a quarter of votes in the first round, and can count on their respective bases. But the decisions of the other roughly 50 percent of the voters who voted for neither candidate are difficult to predict. Shafik has picked up endorsements from small political parties, the former loyal opposition, and the tourism-worker association, and he can reasonably expect many who voted for former foreign minister Amr Moussa as a less divisive alternative to vote for him in the second round to keep the Brotherhood out. But much of the center was shocked by the recent acquittal of senior security officials and Mubarak’s sons, and by the judges’ conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that police killed protesters in January 2011.

By the same token, much of the center is alarmed by the prospect of the Brotherhood controlling both the presidency and parliament, and Morsi has not persuasively made his case to the dyed-in-the-wool opposition, some of whom have even said they will vote for Shafik, in order “to hasten the revolutionary dialectic,” or “to spark a second revolution.” Many, looking at the events of the last year, believe the Brotherhood would be happy to strike a deal with the military in exchange for power. As one disheartened first-round voter recently put it, the question is now “whether one prefers one’s dictatorship straight-up, or with a bit of religion mixed in.” Faced with such a choice, many will choose neither. Some will act on the streets.

Either way, the generals are perhaps banking on the notion that the battle for Egypt’s future will be fought on the terrain of institutions and laws, not on the pavements of Tahrir, that protests will eventually die down following concessions, crackdowns, fatigue, and despair. The Egyptian regime has survived similar periods in the past in similar ways.

If so, it is a tragic miscalculation: tragic for those who will yet lose their eyes, for the bereft mothers, for millions of poor people who will not find enough to eat, and for a new generation of disillusioned millions, who, like their parents had in the 1970s, dreamed of, fought for, and failed to secure a better future. But also tragic for the lasting damage to the prestige of perhaps the last two institutions in Egypt that had any: the military (a preoccupation a top general not long ago confided to the press he harbored) and, now that the courts have been drafted into the political fray, perhaps the judiciary.

In a way, Egypt is left where it was after the initial 18-day uprising, on the verge of a terrifying period of chaos—and perhaps, as many said they feared after the first-round elections, of killing—hoping the army’s intentions are pure. In the halo of the national catharsis and jubilation that erupted when the army did the right thing then and saved the country from chaos, some of those who are now among the generals’ most outspoken adversaries said they would give the military more than it dare ask for now. After a year of disappointment, mistakes, mismanagement, and, in extreme circumstances, soldiers’ use of force against protesters, fewer are willing to give the military the benefit of the doubt, a fact reflected in the recent resurgence of mass protest.

If Shafik makes good on his campaign promises to endeavor not to imprison people for their opinions and to achieve the goals of the youth’s revolution, rather than his campaign promises to use lethal force to disperse protests, Egypt will not be a utopia, but it will be better at the end of his term. The same, one hopes, might hold true if he makes good on his more surly promises (he praised the use of lethal force to clear a May protest in front of the Ministry of Defense, saying it was a small taste of what to expect under his rule, for example). It will just take more wasted blood to get there.

In such a situation, there is little Europeans and other foreigners who wish Egypt well can do. The challenge will be to maintain good relations with Egypt, the nation and the people, without entering into what will and should be an Egyptian struggle over the country’s future.

Egypt is in crisis. The best donors can do is try to minimize the suffering that crisis causes, by, for example, shoring up the currency, or by helping to ensure citizens have access to healthcare, clean water, and electricity. If Egypt’s next government backslides on human rights—on freedom of opinion or assembly for example—foreign governments can and should speak out clearly and publicly, but always as a frank disagreement among equals with a shared interest in Egypt’s prosperity and stability.

The stakes of the unfolding Egyptian drama are highest for Egyptians, and they are the only ones who can and should determine its outcome. But the actual economic and security costs, as well as opportunity costs, of an unhappy outcome in Egypt are too high for the rest of the region and the world to bear, at a time when both can least afford them.

Elijah Zarwan is a senior policy fellow for the European Council on Foreign Relations

The conviction and life imprisonment sentences handed down Saturday to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and former Interior Minister Habib Adli mark a profound but still imprecise turning point in the single most important battle that has defined the Arab world for the last two generations, and the last 60 years of uninterrupted military rule in Egypt: the contest between whether the Arab people will be ruled by democratically legitimate civilian authorities or by self-imposed and self-perpetuating military rulers.

The convictions are profound because they symbolically mark a victory by those tens of millions of Egyptians — and by extension, several hundred million other Arabs — who have overthrown four regimes and seriously challenged two others in the past 18 months, demanding that their dictatorial rulers be held accountable for their brutality, corruption and abuse of power. The demonstrators who braved dangers and often died finally achieved their single most important symbolic goal, which is to put on trial, convict and jail for life Hosni Mubarak and Habib Adli. They are the most important symbols of thousands of other incumbent officials who brutalized and demeaned the Egyptian people for decades. They also personify a system of military rule that enriched a small circle of insiders, while relegating the rest of the 80 million Egyptians to a long and degrading cycle of poverty, mediocrity and marginalization.

In the last 30 years of Mubarak rule, a once proud and productive Egyptian people and nation had been pummeled by its own authoritarian military rulers into a wreck and a laughing stock. Trying, convicting and jailing these two men for life, by an indigenous Egyptian court, was probably the single most widespread and deeply felt desire among the Egyptian people in the last 18 months. It sent the message that those who abuse and degrade their own people will one day be held accountable, and that public opinion in the Arab world matters again.

On another level, however, this court case is also imprecise in its full meaning, both because of technical flaws and some powerful underlying political messages. The technical flaws relate to widespread skepticism about how the two senior leaders could be convicted in the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators while six senior police and security officers who were in charge of operational commands were found innocent and released. This captures the underlying political message that many fear is inherent in the Saturday verdicts: that the Egyptian security state will sacrifice one or two senior officials to placate popular anger, while preserving control of real power in the country by a web of military, police and intelligence agencies.

This issue becomes all the more significant because of the timing of the verdicts, two weeks before the run-off presidential election and the planned handover of power to civilian authorities by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that has governed Egypt since Mubarak’s overthrow in February 2011. One of the two presidential candidates, Ahmad Shafik, a former Air Force commander and the last prime minister under Mubarak, represents the attempt by the military-backed old guard to retain power and effectively nullify the gains of the revolution. Today’s court verdict increases fears among many Egyptians that the SCAF is shielding the operational core of the deep security state from public scrutiny and accountability, and will also work with the existing massive bureaucracy and the many security agencies to engineer a Shafik victory over the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi.

Critics of the SCAF point out, for example, that the former Mubarak government used biased military courts to try some 2,000 critics over 30 years, while the SCAF has used the same military courts to try over 12,000 Egyptians in the last year and a half, according to estimates by human rights organizations that monitor this issue.

This is why the court verdict, while satisfying the popular need for justice and retribution against former dictators, only intensifies concerns throughout Egypt and the Arab world about whether our region can ever get rid of military rulers, and enjoy true civilian democratic rule. This remains the central battle of the Arab world today. It plays itself out in different forms across the region, in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya.

Two aging military rulers were convicted and jailed in Cairo this week, but the military ruling edifice remains largely in place. Hundreds of generals and colonels still contest and negotiate power with the new civilian authorities that are trying to find their footing in a country that itself is still in the early stages of redefining itself, and deciding if its government will be managed by elected civilians or more ageing generals and colonels. The great battle for the soul and identity of Egypt and the Arab world continues.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of  The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2012 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

Let’s do the math.

According to the preliminary results of Egypt’s presidential poll, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) candidate Mohammed Morsi picked up 5,578,760 votes, around 25 percent, followed by Mubarak-era minister and PM Ahmed Shafik with 5,333,84, 24 percent. In a surprise showing, Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi was next with 4,670,939 votes, 21 percent. Trailing were two former leading candidates, ex-Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh with 3,919,727, 18 percent, and in a distant fifth place, former Arab League secretary general and Mubarak-era Foreign Minister Amr Moussa at 2,391,214, or 11 percent.

If we divide the top five candidates into Islamists and non-Islamists, the simple calculation reveals that Islamists Morsi and Aboul Fotouh secured 43 percent of the vote, a mammoth 13 percent less than the total percentage of votes gained by the three non-Islamist candidates, who combined, received around 56 percent of the vote.

Compare that to the Islamist victory in the parliamentary election recorded in January. The FJP-dominated Democratic Alliance alone picked up around 47 percent of People’s Assembly seats in a poll where voter turnout was around 54 percent, at least 10 percent higher than in the presidential election.

In terms of the number of votes, while the FJP raked in some 13 million votes in the parliamentary election, that number crashed down to 5.5 million in the presidential race. Even if we add Aboul Fotouh’s votes to the mix, the number still barely reaches 9.4 million votes, down by a staggering 3.6 million from those who voted Islamist less than six months ago.

Despite their massive organizational machine, Morsi struggled to make it to the runoff, betraying rising disillusionment with the FJP and the Islamist discourse in general.

The 56 percent who voted non-Islamist had one common denominator: their absolute resolve not to see the FJP candidate in the presidential office. This was a manifestation of their unequivocal objection to the fact that the FJP seeks to dominate the political arena, with a significant block in parliament and possibly a leading voice in the controversial constituent assembly tasked with writing the new constitution.

While it’s understandable that voters, disillusioned and fearful of Islamist hegemony, would choose to support another icon of the revolution like Hamdeen Sabahi, the reason why the runoff will most likely end up between the two polar extremes Morsi and Shafiq, is that Egyptians have proven that they are still trapped in the anti-Islamist rhetoric of the Mubarak era. These results have taken us back to square one when many may find themselves forced to plug their ears and noses to give their protest vote to the FJP, just like the old days.

The fear of Islamists is so deeply entrenched in the Egyptian psyche that it has obliterated the memory of the revolution’s martyrs. In a way, the shocking support for Shafik betrays a level of ethical and moral bankruptcy that surpasses mere political illiteracy. Shafik’s rise from the ashes of the martyrs was only made possible with the backing of the disbanded National Democratic Party whose patronage system is alive and well. His veiled threat to clamp down on both the Islamists and the revolutionaries was the war cry for the counter-revolutionaries, headed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has been preparing for this moment since February 12, 2011.

Some so-called liberal intellectuals and politicians, with their phobic attitude towards the Islamists, also helped create the vacuum filled by Shafik. Their fear of an illusive theocracy, which they consistently pitted against the equally illusive notion of a “civil state,” has overlooked the biggest threat of all to the rise of democracy in this country: military rule.

Egypt’s Islamists, the FJP in particular, have made grave mistakes. Their abysmal performance at the polls and in parliament, which proves beyond a doubt how their street credence has plunged, must force them to make serious concessions to save the revolution from the grip of an electoral ‘naksa’ (crisis), a setback to the worst days of the Mubarak era, but alas this time supported by the legitimacy of free and fair elections.

The Islamists must reach immediate consensus with other political forces over the formation of the constituent assembly mandated to draft a new constitution, an issue of vital importance that faded from public attention during the presidential election but witnesses major conflicts in parliament. Agreement to offer Sabahi the position of prime minister with a solid executive mandate will be essential to the creation of a strong, representative pro-revolutionary front. Islamists’ failure to reach such consensus will be the last nail in their coffin. They will lose the presidency to Shafik, whose first decision will be to dissolve parliament.

And with that Egypt will have come full circle.

Rania Al Malky is a Cairo-based columnist and the former chief editor of the Daily News Egypt.