Walking on a tightrope

Author: Dr Nasir Islam

Happy at its victory in the Egyptian presidential elections, the Muslim Brotherhood now faces a power struggle with the armed forces ruling the country for the last 60 years. In choosing what was perceived as the lesser evil, the Egyptian people sent a clear message to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) by not voting for its candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, the former prime minister of Hosni Mubarak. What started in Tahrir Square 15 months back has ended with the swearing in of Mohammad Morsi Thursday as the next President. Disoriented by the political developments in the wake of the revolution that saw Hosni Mubarak ousted after 30 years in power, the Egyptian people are still waiting for the army to return to the barracks. The crowds that rallied spontaneously in Tahrir Square at the height of the movement failed at the next stage of political organisation to mount an effective challenge to the military and the Islamists going into the elections. Resultantly the forces that were already organised and hardened by decades of struggle, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, took the lead. Resented by the secular-liberal-progressive ‘revolutionaries’ of Tahrir Square, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) could end up dividing Egypt even further. In an effort to allay its opponents’ fears, the Muslim Brotherhood has categorically denied any intent to impose Sharia or of assuming strategic posts such as Foreign Affairs and the Interior Ministry. It wants involvement in services that could relate it directly to the people, like health and social affairs.

The million-dollar question is, would the Muslim Brotherhood be able to run the government without military interference? Interestingly, as the presidential vote went to the FJP, the ruling SCAF amended the constitutional declaration it had issued last year, resuming legislative powers and restricting the authority of the president, thereby consolidating the ‘coup’ that started with the dissolution of parliament. What is termed as a de facto martial law empowered the SCAF to hold the effective reins of power. It has endowed itself with the authority to pick a panel of its choice to write the new constitution.

In the midst of the Arab Spring that has effected sweeping changes in the regional political set-up, Egypt is in a bind to make things work on democratic lines. The Brotherhood has to live up to its claim of dispensing with radicalisation and perhaps adopt the Turkish model to render both tendencies — religion and secularism — able to co-exist, even if uneasily, in the new Egypt struggling to emerge from the womb of the old. *

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