On Coups, Fascism, Broken Promises, and the Rule of Law

Right, I had promised myself not to get involved in politics any more. Those of you who have been following me on this blog and my various social media accounts probably already know this, but recent events have woken me from my slumber. I can no longer watch the events unfolding without expressing myself in writing. So here goes, my first political blog in I don’t remember how long.  Neotheone is back.

As most of the world knows, the Egyptian people had a revolution redux on the 30th of June. A grassroots campaign, called Tamarod — the Arabic for rebel — collected approximately 22 million signed petitions for the impeachment of Morsi, the first president elected to power in Egypt after the January 25 revolution deposed Honsi Mubarak.

Twenty two million. That is more than the number of people who voted Morsi into office. People filled the streets, and the military responded, they removed Morsi from power and replaced him with an interim civilian administration. I was very happy at the turn of events, at last, an oppressive, discriminatory regime was removed from power. At last, Egypt would belong to all Egyptians, not one sect or group.

For me it was a day of celebration, a day on which my faith in the Egyptian people was restored. We would not be mismanaged again, we would not allow an incompetent administration to drag us back into the stone ages. The response of MB supporters, as expected, was the opposite.

They claimed that this was a coup against a legitimate government, and that the military was staging a come-back. From a strictly semantic point of view, it was a coup. The dictionary definition of a coup is “the sudden deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to depose the extant government and replace it with another body, civil or military.”

By that definition, the 30th of July was a coup. But so was the January 25 removal of Mubarak, and, before that, the 1952 removal of the monarchy. In all three cases, the military intervened to remove the ruler. In all three cases, the military had popular support from the population. But spin doctors know how to play their game, they called the first two revolutions and the last a coup. Why? Because that fit their demagogic ideas. It allowed them to play the victim when, in fact, they were the aggressors.

Let’s recap the recent history of the MB, I will not bring up their discriminatory ideology, or their support for bigotry. That will be the topic of another blog post, but I will document their history of treachery and shamefaced opportunism. Something that becomes laughable when compared to their current whining that the removal of Morsi is against the law.

1. After the January 25 revolution, they would call it a coup by their logic, they promised not to run for all seats in parliament — to assure the Egyptian people that they did not mean to dominate power — but they broke this promise and ran for all seats.
2. After the January 25 revolution, they promised not to field a presidential candidate, but they did in the end.
3. They formed a constitutional committee that was dominated by their fellow ideologues and excluded any meaningful representation of other segments of society.
4. When this committee’s biased composition was challenged in law, they formed another committee that was equally biased.
5. And to prevent the courts from ruling on the constitutionality of this committee, Morsi declare his decisions and the composition of the committee above the law in a notorious presidential decree announced on November 22. 2012.
6. Their unrepresentative, and now immune, committee then rammed through a flawed and unrepresentative constitution with no opposition  — since the token opposition members on the committee had withdrawn in protest at their heavy-handed approach of pushing through what they wanted.
7. They pushed their members into every conceivable post, filling even technocratic posts with ideologues who knew nothing about the technicalities of the post, but who would toe the party line.
8. Their mismanagement caused power cuts, fuel shortages, inflation, a depletion of foreign reserves, a devaluation of the Egyptian Pound, and general economic malaise.
9. They did not fulfil any of the revolution’s aims which included social justice and freedom, instead they reduced freedoms and did nothing to address social justice.

These are only some of the misdeeds of the MB and their cronies. It is not the purpose of this post to document them all, I only include a small list of their errors here. The people who elected them into power did not ask for this, they wanted freedom and social equality. Instead they got oppression and mismanagement.

At this point, I would like to share with you a portion of the US declaration of independence that is particularly apt to the situation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The people of Egypt found that Morsi’s government was destructive of these ends, and decided to abolish it. Call it what you like, it was a legitimate expression of the will of the people. If there had been a proper impeachment procedure present in the constitution, we would have used it. But there wasn’t, so we did what we could.

And how did the MB respond? In exactly the same way it always has. It called it’s opponents kafirs, infidels, enemies of Islam, and accused the Coptic Christian minority of being behind the “coup” — which would be amazing, because if we number 22 million, we wouldn’t be a minority any longer.

They also bussed their supporters into Cairo from the provinces, and engagement in violent confrontation with both the military and opposing protesters.

So when the military asked the people to protest this Friday, the 26th of July, to give it a mandate to address the violence and terrorism that has been plaguing Egypt in recent days, I supported the call wholeheartedly. Morsi supporters called this a fascist move. Yes, imagine a fascist movement calling others fascist. It boggles the mind.

I want the MB ousted from society. It is time that bigotry and hate be removed from Egypt forever. I want an Egypt for all Egyptians, an Egypt were we can all live the way we want to live, not one in which one group forces it’s beliefs on everybody else. Viva la revolution, or coup, or whatever.