[مستر محمد سلام]

Ex-president Morsi

On the first anniversary of his inauguration as Egypt’s first ever elected president Mohamed Morsi found himself facing demonstrations, unprecedented in size, demanding his dismissal. At times it felt as if the entire population was on the streets, the vast majority asking Morsi to go.
The size of nationwide protests on 30 June wrong-footed not just Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood leadership but also key Western capitals, not least Washington.
The mass protests were accompanied by a show of sympathy for the Armed Forces whose leadership was receiving assessments suggesting that protester numbers would exceed 10 million. Demonstrators also received a sympathetic nod from both the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar and the patriarch of the Coptic Church.
“I don’t need encouragement from anyone to join the demonstrations. I have never protested before, not during 25 January Revolution or afterwards, but I am protesting now because things cannot go on this way. I spent five hours last night queuing to get fuel for my car and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of our problems,” said Ahmed, an accountant, on the eve of 30 June demonstrations.
A day later and Ahmed’s sentiments were being expressed by millions of demonstrators who flocked to the presidential palace. Complaints of deteriorating living conditions dominated, but there was also concern over attacks on freedoms, especially the freedom of expression.
Informed sources say that as the demonstrations were growing Morsi, “secured” in an annex of the offices of the intelligence, was insisting that protesters numbered only tens of thousands, all of them supporters of the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak.
“He was not just arguing, he really believed it. When he was shown pictures of Tahrir Square he actually claimed the pictures were false,” said one source.
The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had anticipated a much smaller turnout, was left clinging to claims of legitimacy. Numbers obviously meant nothing. “Legitimacy is on our side. People have the right to express themselves, but it doesn’t change a thing,” railed Sobhi Saleh, a leading member at the group.
The Army General Command — a 50-member committee of top brass — had already issued a 48-hour ultimatum for “all the parties concerned to bow to the will of the people”. The ultimatum was designed to prompt the president to acknowledge the mass call for early presidential elections. It failed. The president, according to one informed source, “was furious when he heard the ultimatum”.
Morsi’s fury was shared by a vast majority of the Brotherhood’s leaders, though stories circulated that there was some dissent voiced within the organisation. Sources say that Saad Al-Katatni argued for a more realistic approach only to be overruled by his colleagues.
“We are doing this for a reason. Morsi is the elected president; the statement of the army is a military coup. It is a slap in the face of legitimacy,” said Muslim Brotherhood member Hamdi Hassan. “To bow to the call for Morsi to step down is to overthrow the results of the free and fair presidential elections.”
Not so, says political scientist Rabab Al-Mahdi. A coup would involve the army, for its own reasons and away from any public pressure. “We saw this happening in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez but the people went to the streets and reinstated Chavez.”
A political activist who long opposed the Mubarak regime, Al-Mahdi insists that “what we are looking at here is the military going with the popular will”.
“Democracy manifested itself when Morsi was elected,” she argues, “and it re-manifested itself when the masses took to the streets to ask Morsi to step down.”
Like many opposition figures, Al-Mahdi accepts the military’s reassurances that it will not “rule the country from the driver’s seat”.
A military source tells Al-Ahram Weekly that Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, appointed less than a year ago by Morsi to replace Hussein Tantawi, declined the Muslim Brotherhood’s offer, supported by the US, to become prime minister and retain Morsi as a “symbolic president”.
“He is very clear that there will be no military rule. Al-Sisi declined all suggestions that there should be a military prime minister with expanded prerogatives,” he said.
On the second day of the ultimatum sources say Morsi was close to agreeing to delegate his powers to a new prime minister and call early presidential elections in exchange for a safe exit and immunity from prosecution for himself and other Brotherhood leaders, only to make a U-turn and broadcast a televised statement insisting he would remain. “This is the rule of legitimacy; if we deviate from legitimacy, our democratic march would suffer a setback… and the country could fall into civil unrest.”
The statement shocked the crowds in Tahrir and in front of the presidential palaces in Heliopolis and Al-Qubba who had been expecting “a moment of celebration”.
The president’s strategy, an impression reinforced by the frantic tweeting of his aides Essam Al-Haddad and Pakinam Al-Sharkawi, had crystallised: the goal now was to persuade the international community that Morsi was threatened by a coup.
Western diplomats speaking to the Weekly insist their governments cannot endorse a military coup and want to see a resolution to the crisis via a mechanism that cannot be judged extra-constitutional. Washington issued conflicting reports, eventually telling the army leadership that it would have to suspend military aid to Egypt even in the event of a “grey coup”, according to CNN. The US capital later denied the report.
While the US embassy and the Muslim Brotherhood were pushing to keep Morsi as a “symbolic president” pending fresh presidential elections, Morsi was grabbing at an initiative that when it was proposed by the Salafist Nour Party he resolutely ignored. Suddenly he conceded that a national unity government and revisiting controversial articles of the constitution might not be such a bad idea after all.
Such were the concessions an increasingly beleaguered Morsi offered in his Monday evening speech. This time, though, it was the protesters who resolutely ignored them. “We accept no offers from him. We don’t accept him as a president, honorary or otherwise. He just needs to go. No more,” said Amr, an activist making his way to Al-Qubba palace on Tuesday afternoon. “This evening he will have to be gone. We expect a statement from opposition forces and the army any moment.”
The next day Al-Sisi and other top brass were meeting with representatives from political forces, including Islamists. It was not clear as the Weekly went to print whether Al-Katatni had heeded calls to join the meeting to allow the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) to take part in the next government.
“We are hoping to see all the key parties, including the FJP, at the table. We are not here to exclude any political group but to help Egyptians sit together and fix their differences in a way that allows the country to move away from polarisation,” said a military source.
But what is the post-Morsi roadmap?
Egypt, it appears, is heading for a new interim phase to be co-managed by the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, an independent government and the army, with the latter insisting they are not at the wheel. The controversial constitution that was adopted last winter with the support of just 20 per cent of eligible voters, will be suspended and revised. A prime minister mandated to focus on the economy will be asked to form a national unity government. It is not clear how Islamists opposed to this deal will react, or how far they will go in defence of a legitimacy they do not realise they have squandered.
The Weekly went to press after the military ultimatum had ended and still no statement had been released. However, media reports stated that Al-Sisi was to address the nation at 9pm attended by the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Patriarch of the Coptic Church Tawadros II and opposition leader Mohamed Al-Baradei. A flurry of reports circulated that Morsi was under house arrest and senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including Khairat Al-Shater and Essam Al-Erian, banned from travelling abroad pending investigations into their roles in the mass escape of prisoners from Wadi Al-Natroun prison two years ago.