Egyptian history brings to the fore a spectacular display of civilisations rising to the unprecedented zenith in terms of military might and architectural prowess and empires dissipating into the fog of oblivion by degrees. Adding more shades to this intriguing region is the flowing body of the River Nile that has been the lifeline for the civilisations that forged ahead along its margins for centuries. The geographical positioning of Egypt that connects the giant Asian markets with the developed economies of the west through the Suez Canal demands global powers to stay in the loop of the ever-evolving political dynamics of Egypt directly with relevance to the greater interests of the world trade system. The Suez Canal crisis, which prompted Israel, France and Britain to stage a lethal attack on the territory of Egypt, endangered the prospects of future sustainable trade. But subsequently, the then USSR and US timely intervened to broker a ceasefire.
Democracy has never been the tradition of Egyptian political history with four military rulers arrogating to themselves the powers of the executive over six decades prior to the propelling of Mr Mohamad Morsi to the helm of affairs as the first elected president of Egypt in 2012. The modern history of Egypt is crisscrossed by a series of putsches, restricting its strides towards political maturity. The ‘sessile’ dictatorship ever since the revolution in 1952 has blunted the potential capability of Egyptian political parties to design themselves on the lines of a modern paradigm. Soon after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the military took the reins of power as an interim government and performed the role of a midwife for the transition towards the first hard-earned democracy. The parliamentary elections gave birth to a government chiefly comprising of Islamists under the leadership of Morsi, who bagged 52 percent votes in the follow-up presidential elections. The Freedom and Justice Party, which is the Egyptian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, netted 47 percent of all seats with Al Noure (the Salafists) languishing at 24.7 percent. The president constituted a committee (Constituent Assembly) to formulate a constitution in line with the spirit of economic, political and social traditions of Egypt.
The brouhaha that culminated in the ouster of Mr Morsi emanated from his decision to immunise himself against the always looming outreach of the judiciary, which was already implicated in the crime of dissolving an elected parliament some months earlier. Democratically elected rulers are often vested with additional powers to acquire certain calculated objectives in a particular timeframe. The US Congress lent its president (George Bush) unconstitutionally awesome powers to dispatch troops to any perceived target without the approval of the government under the Authorisation for Use of Military Force (AUMF) soon after 9/11. The bureaucracy, judiciary and the army of Egypt contrived in league to topple the elected government through an artificial creation of shortage of food articles, petroleum and electricity. As per the readings of the pre-written script soon after the ‘coup’, all the amenities and household features suspended a day before were released overnight. An act to conjure up a smokescreen in the eyes of the international community paid off and a successfully running democratic project was disrupted to make the objectives of global powers tangible.
Mr Morsi might have overlooked the concerns of some liberal circles, but it remains a brazen reality that his policies exuded neither the smell of fascism nor the abhorrence of exclusiveness. His decisions did not bear any signs of a potential threat to the lifestyles of the liberal quarters. Having a sweeping 2/3 majority on the floor of parliament, Mr Morsi still did not appoint the prime minister and vice president from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. Had he wanted he could have handpicked them by exercising his constitutional right under the sacred provisions. He was fiercely pushed by the Salafists who bagged considerable seats in parliament to inject some ultra-conservative provisions. In a bid to let the constitution strike a chord with a larger section of the nation, Mr Morsi did not yield to their full-fledged pressure and brushed it off. He remained a cornerstone figure behind the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, which brought to a halt the massacre of thousands of innocents.
Mr Morsi set a new tone for regional economic cooperation and as a result, shaped an economic policy aiming to develop an environment conducive for mutual trade among Turkey, Iran and Egypt. Qatar betrayed its overt intention to push this deal to a fruitful destination by lending a sum amounting to billions of dollars. In order to thwart this attempt that would have set Iran free from the shackles of economic deprivation, the US inspired a regime change in Qatar (Tamim bin Hammad succeeded his father) by bringing into the political limelight a person who is too young to fathom the intricacies of international dynamics directly wedded with the policies of Qatar.
The Muslim Brotherhood, notwithstanding the criticism, not only assumes its pivotal share in the political dispensation of Egypt, it has ingrained roots fanned out even on the political landscape of Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria and the rest of the Middle Eastern countries. If the parties that harbour an oceanic support base lose faith in the democratic struggle, they might inevitably join the radical Islamist outfits of the likes of Al-Shabab, Al-Watan, Ansar al-Shariah, which are toeing the radical thinking line of al Qaeda. The ever-surging apprehensions and misgivings of moderation-leaning parties must be entertained in a bid to avert their possible assimilation into the stream of al Qaeda, which will have potentially disastrous repercussions upon the political contours of the world.
There is an urgent need to pass a bill at the forum of the UN declaring an act of overthrowing an elected government a serious attempt to rob the greater mass of the citizenry in a country of the right to wield their democratic power and condemning this move as an intentional design to undermine the always-endangered democratic order of the world. This resolution might morph into an effective legislative vehicle to avert a possible takeover even in the most fortified democratic countries.
The writer is currently studying Economics and International Relations at the New York University and can be reached at [email protected]