The compulsory retirement of 70 Egyptian generals by President Ahmad Morsi has kindled a new hope for the pre-eminence and sovereignty of the people and efflorescence of the democratic essentials in the developing world, particularly in the Muslim states long battered by praetorian predominance and overlordship. The step becomes even more stimulating as Egypt actually is the first Muslim country to assert the supremacy of the elected civilian leadership, emulating the Turkish exemplar to reign in the insubordinate scheming generals out to discredit, destabilise, derail or just directly dismiss elected governments. Another enviable aspect of the Egyptian operation is that it has been relatively more rapid as compared to the Turkish trek that took almost a decade to assert civilian ascendency. The sacking came barely two months after Mohamed Morsi’s oath taking on June 30. Morsi actually asserted his authority within a few days after his oath taking by rescinding the special proclamation issued by the army’s Supreme Council right at the moment when the votes for the presidential runoff were being counted. The proclamation was a brazen and supercilious edict to curtail the clout of the elected constituent assembly as well as the president as it empowered the generals to dictate the form of the constitution being formulated by the elected parliament. The two top generals were then replaced on August 12. The reasons for the present purge are most likely rooted in the failure of the security forces to prevent the gruesome attacks in the Sinai belt that threatened to undermine the uneasy truce that has prevailed after war with Israel. Turkey’s approach, which interestingly like Egypt is also ruled by an avowedly religious party more commonly known by its acronym AKP, is undoubtedly pioneering an intrepid strategy to swamp the generals. They, almost like the commanders in Pakistan, had directly or indirectly ruled the country as unassailable supra-constitutional sovereign shoguns for 60 years, strutting as the ultimate custodians, arbiters and interpreters of the national will, sovereignty, interests and policies. The superior courts served as their surrogates to cloak and enforce the martial whims through a judicial maze and manipulations. They executed the elected premier, Adnan Menderes in September 1961, toppled the elected governments in 1971 and 1980, and scuttled the civilian set up in 1997 through forced resignation. The trials against the former army and air chiefs with four other senior officers in March 2012 were thus ordered for the coup staged in 1980. The reasons for the indictments and incarceration of 55 generals reported on August 3, according to the official investigations, were imputed to the conspiracies hatched in 2003, about a year after Tayyip Erdogan’s ascent to power. The accused were found to have conspired to maneouvre attacks on the religious and other significant and sacrosanct sites to stir popular sentiments against the inefficiency and failure of their civilian superiors. Instigation and provocation against Greece similarly were also plotted to invoke some border skirmishes to roil the country with rant and ruckus about national sovereignty, defence and integrity, and use the unrest thus engineered to disband the government. Some clusters of journalists, intellectuals and other activists were also in league with the generals to guillotine the civilian set up. Greece, it may be remembered, has a long-standing spat with Turkey, centred mainly around their claims over Cyprus. Many readers, thus, would evidently seek similarities between these Turkish generals’ tactics and the mysterious Bombay carnage, continued and enigmatic unrest in Karachi, judge-general collusion to ignite the Mansoor memo tinder, relentless judicial inquisition against some elected icons, leading even to the world’s rarest feat of flushing out the unanimously elected premier under the flimsiest controversy concerning the non-implementation of a controversial court order, while no action ever has been taken against any judge or general for far more damning crimes like defiling the constitution. The targeted elected quarry being hounded in Pakistan, however, has been too cowered, cornered or just crass inefficient and careless to probe if these apparently isolated and disparate assaults are the threads interlinking the same planned grand pattern. The Turkish leadership, in contrast, courageously followed through to crush the conspiratorial dragnets and entrusted the task to some really determined, intrepid and competent investigation, prosecution and jurist cadres committed to foster ultimate popular sovereignty and undeterred from taking on the mighty generals. Another encouraging element of the Turkish as well as the Egyptian thrust of accountability has been that their opposition and media circles did not create any furor or even question or criticise the government’s power, privilege or the rationale for removing and punishing the perpetrators. This elicited the emergence of an admirably mature and responsible democratic mindset almost like the advanced established democracies like the US, Britain or even India, where an unquestioned deference by the generals to their elected superiors and departure at their slightest displeasure reigns as a routine inviolable element of the professional ethos. Relieving of General Garner by Bush and General McChrystal by Obama are aptly illustrative. Obama’s edict is particularly more symptomatic of a saner media and the opposition. The Republican vehemence against his persona, policies and performance and the singeing stance aired against him by media empires like Fox, which generally support the Republicans, are quite well known. Yet McChrystal was never debated against him. The demonstration of the confidence and the authority by the elected Egyptian and Turkish elected icons as well as the vision and cooperation extended by their media, opposition and civil society may be characteristically quite exhilarating for enthusiasts and exponents of democracy amongst us. Yet it is certainly more appropriate to ponder why a comparable practice has eluded us despite the fact that we persistently struggled and managed to wrest at least some sporadic spans of elected systems during the last 50 years. Ending the dominance of the unelected potentates over the representative institutions, national policies and resources constitutes an integral precondition for the continuation of democracy and delivering its fruits and dividends to the public. Without it, democracy would remain a mere sentimental cruise stuck in the straits and storms of deprivation, disillusionment and doubts. The writer is an academic and freelance columnist.habibpbu@yahoo.com