Egypt needs elections, not generals
Muhammad Mursi’s one-year rule of Egypt was disastrous. He ruled by fiat, alienated potential allies and failed to stabilize the country’s spiraling economy. But a military coup is not an answer to Egypt’s problems. It will exacerbate, not ease, Egypt’s vast political divide.
The Egyptian military’s primary interest is maintaining its privileged role in society and vast network of businesses. Like the Pakistani military now and the Brazilian military in the past, its desire to maintain its economic interests will slow desperately needed economic and political reforms.
There is little reason to have faith in Egypt’s broken political process at this point, but the best ways to ease the country’s bitter divisions are immediate elections and a transparent political process, not military rule.
“Political inclusiveness is the only way forward,” said Lauren Bohn, an American journalist who has covered Egypt. “And many worry they won’t see much of that in the days ahead.”
First, many different and seemingly contradictory things are occurring in the country. The protesters that have filled Tahrir Square, David Ignatius noted Wednesday in the Washington Post, are a genuine citizens’ movement.
They are demanding basic rights, an accountable government and dignity. Most important, they will not accept autocratic rule from military dictators or Islamist political parties.
The same can be said of the protesters in Istanbul’s Taksim square. The remnants of Iran’s Green Party, who elected a relative moderate as the country’s new president, roughly fit that description as well. All these developments are positive and a sign of empowered citizens making legitimate demands of government.
But other things now occurring in Egypt are not. The country’s political elite is deeply polarized. Members of the secular opposition and its Islamists disdain one another. Any semblance of trust or compromise has disappeared.
In Tahrir Square, some protesters carried signs calling for the Obama administration to stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s “fascist regime.” They scoffed at the idea that the Brotherhood would ever allow free elections and called the coup a “revolution.” They insisted that they were stopping a Brotherhood plot to turn Egypt into theocratic state that resembled Afghanistan after the Taliban. Brotherhood supporters, meanwhile, were heartbroken, seeing the coup as a re-assertion of the military rule they have struggled to overcome in Egypt for decades. They claimed the opposition had a “personal vendetta” against the Brotherhood. And they called the current struggle “an existential battle” with the military they will not lose.
In a trenchant analysis in The New Republic, Nathan Brown, an expert on Islamist political movements, offers a detailed list of the colossal mistakes Mursi made in office. But also warns about what happens next. A crackdown on the Brotherhood, Brown suggests, could result in some of its members embracing violence.
“It would be wise for those who are now victorious in Egypt to remember that the issue is not only what the Brotherhood learns,” Brown wrote, “the issue is also what Islamists are taught.”
For the Obama administration, the coup is a minefield and a second chance. Washington’s influence is enormously limited in Egypt. Forty-years of backing Egyptian military rulers who embraced peace with Israel have left Washington with no credibility. As Brown notes, “Egypt’s rumor mill transformed preposterous rumor into established fact with breathtaking speed.”
Many members of the secular opposition are convinced the Obama administration placed the Brotherhood in power. Islamists, however, see an American hand behind the coup that toppled Mursi.
That is why it is vital for Washington to demand immediate elections and no crackdown on the brotherhood. President Barack Obama’s statement on Tuesday was surprisingly strong in some areas.
“I now call on the Egyptian military,” Obama said, “to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Mursi and his supporters.”
