INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP
Media Release: Egypt
Cairo/Brussels, 25 June 2012: Celebrated by
millions of Egyptians, yesterday's announcement that Mohamed Morsi, the
Muslim Brotherhood candidate, has won the presidential election
undoubtedly marks a milestone in the country’s history. Still, this
event does little to resolve the fundamental problems that existed
beforehand: eighteen months after the uprising that led to President
Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, the political system is paralysed, no
institutions enjoy the required legitimacy or credibility to break the
logjam, all political actors have been discredited to varying degrees,
and societal polarisation has reached new heights.
To salvage the transition and lay the foundation for a more stable
polity, political actors need to do today what they ought to have done
in February 2011: seek agreement on a set of principles that would
respect all sides’ vital interests while ensuring a peaceful democratic
transition.
The deteriorating situation is the culmination of a
mismanaged process that, from the very beginning, has lacked clear
direction and agreed rules of the game. Political players – including
the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the Muslim Brotherhood
and more liberal, secular forces – are proceeding in the dark,
unaccustomed to the new environment, distrustful of one another and
quick to resort to extra-institutional means, whether issuance of
arbitrary decisions or street politics, to bolster their respective
positions.
The result is clear for all to see. With the recent
SCAF measures – restoring a form of martial law that allows the military
to arrest civilians without judicial warrant; establishing a
military-dominated National Defence Council; and promulgating a
Supplementary Constitutional Declaration that enlarges its executive
powers, awards it legislative authority and grants it considerable
latitude over the drafting of a new constitution – and the Supreme
Constitutional Court’s (SCC) invalidation of parliamentary elections,
the transition risks coming full circle.
The outcome of the three rounds of voting, the first
democratic ballots in modern Egyptian history, has been nullified or
seriously questioned. The constitutional changes have in effect
repealed the March 2011 constitutional referendum, both substantively
and procedurally. The parliamentary dissolution has erased the
legislative elections in which 30 million participated.
And the presidential election was mired in controversy both before it
was held (disputes over the disqualification of some candidates and
qualification of others) and after (competing claims of victory,
accompanied by charges of fraud and capped by delays in the announcement
of the result). In this context, serious questions remain as to whether
the promised transfer of power from the military to elected civilian
authorities will occur by the end of June.
For now, the prospect remains of duelling
constitutional principles with no constitution; duelling understandings
of how to create the constituent assembly; duelling legislative bodies
(the dissolved parliament and the SCAF); duelling conceptions of SCAF
prerogatives (eg, whether it can dissolve parliament or issue
constitutional rules); duelling perceptions of executive authority;
duelling mass demonstrations setting one Egypt against the other; and no
agreed mechanism or legitimate arbiter to settle these disputes.
Divisions reach deeper, pitting army against civilians, Islamists
against secularists and Muslims against Coptic Christians. Add an
economic crisis (60 per cent decline in foreign currency reserves,
massive budget deficit, soaring unemployment, stagflation, near
junk-status credit rating) that cannot be tackled in the absence of
political stability and consensus and this is a recipe for persisting
conflict and a possible trigger to escalating violence.
The behaviour of the various parties to date hardly
inspires confidence. Viewed by many as responsible for brutal violence
against protesters, as seeking to protect its interests by reviving the
old regime’s networks and as claiming for itself the roles of judge and
party, the SCAF has squandered much of its legitimacy.
Yet, it continues to believe otherwise, attempting to muscle through
critical political decisions by relying on superior force and invoking
its assumed greater knowledge of what is best for the country. Little
wonder that many in Egypt suspect it of conducting a soft coup.
For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood has appeared to
place all its bets on its electoral strength, shunning serious efforts
to reassure key constituencies. It has antagonised the military, turned
its back on the revolutionary movement, failed to reach out to secular
forces, made insufficient gestures toward the Coptic Christian minority,
threatened supporters of the old regime and repeatedly reneged on its
pledges.
In recent days, it has taken some steps to extend a hand to others in
the opposition but far more is needed after eighteen months of snubbing
them. Overall, although it enjoys formal democratic legitimacy, the
Brotherhood has rallied against itself too broad and too determined a
section of society for electoral mathematics alone to be decisive.
As for the revolutionary movement, disdainful of
politics yet facing overwhelming popular fatigue at the prospect of
renewed protests, it is distrustful of the SCAF but fearful of the
Islamists. This makes its members at times flirt with the idea of
sacrificing their democratic principles on the altar of their secular
faith – thus turning them into easy prey for the military’s
divide-and-conquer tactics, which seek to set them against the Islamists
so that the two faces of the opposition do not unite behind an
expeditious transition. All of which threatens to marginalise the
revolutionary movement and render it increasingly irrelevant.
There is little mystery about the better way
forward. Key political actors need to negotiate a set of understandings
governing the transition, including a clear timetable, allocation of
interim powers, constitution-drafting principles and core interests that
the final document must protect. Movement should be swift.
Morsi is due to be sworn in on 1 July and, already, crises loom: over
whether parliament will convene and whether the president will take his
oath before parliament (consistent with the March 2011 constitutional
amendments approved by referendum) or before the Supreme Constitutional
Court (consistent with the SCAF’s supplementary principles). Suggested
ideas for these understandings include:
- Formation by president-elect Morsi of a national unity government, led by a credible independent figure, and selection of a vice president reflecting Egypt’s ideological and sectarian diversity;
- the SCAF's agreement not to dissolve the existing constituent assembly and name another; in return, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists would form a more broadly representative body, substituting respected independents and legal experts for some Islamists;
- agreement to rerun the one third of parliamentary seats elected via individual candidacies that the SCC ruled unconstitutional, as opposed to dissolving the entire parliament;
- cancellation of the justice ministry decree enabling the military to arrest and detain civilians without a warrant;
- annulment of those provisions in the supplementary constitutional declaration that contradict full transfer of power to civilians and would usurp powers of the president and legislature;
- the SCAF’s commitment to fully disengage from the political arena once the constitution has been written and ratified through a popular referendum; and
- the Muslim Brotherhood’s agreement to seek its legalisation and make its finances fully transparent.
Responsibility lies squarely with the SCAF and the
Brotherhood. By respecting the wishes of a majority of Egyptians with
regard to the presidential elections, the military has shown that it can
act wisely. But it should not view this as a concession giving it a
free hand to delay a full transition. Morsi’s victory speech aimed at
being reassuring and consensual, but the Islamists must do far more and
resist the temptation of triumphalism that has marked virtually all of
their prior successes.
Throughout this process, the international community
– and notably the West – has been caught between the need to support a
democratic transition and the enormous suspicions that continue to taint
its actions due to a chequered history of excessive interference and
support for authoritarian rule. Achieving a proper balance between
pressuring the SCAF without triggering widespread hostility will not be
easy, especially at a time of heightened xenophobia and mistrust of
anything coming from the outside.
At a minimum, the international community should
express a strong commitment to helping the economy through what
inevitably will be a trying period once it is clear the country is on a
path to a genuine democratic transition. Assistance would include the
International Monetary Fund’s substantial soft loan package; financial
aid from various countries; and encouragement of foreign direct
investment. At the same time, key outside actors ought to unambiguously
condemn attempts to undermine democratically elected civilian
institutions.
Considering the stakes, the historical rupture
embodied in the uprising and the fears of so many core constituencies,
what is most surprising, arguably, is that there has not been more
violence – that Egyptians, by and large, have engaged in spirited
debate, taken to the streets peacefully and participated in electoral
politics.
Morsi’s victory, though a bitter disappointment to a large number of
Egyptians, is a signal of a continued transition. Yet all this is
enormously fragile, a brittle reality at the mercy of a single
significant misstep. To right the course of this perilous transition
will require different and wiser steering from all who, for the past
eighteen months, have had a hand in it.
