Quick takes // By Ben FrankelEgyptian military hits the reset button on Egypt’s Arab Spring

There are still twenty-four hours left in yesterday’s 48-hour ultimatum the Egyptian military  gave President Mohammed Morsi to meet the protesters’ demands. The military said that if Morsi did not meet the protesters’ demands, then it — the military — will unveil its own “roadmap for the future” of Egypt.

Since the main demand of the millions of Egyptian demonstrators who took to the streets of Egypt’s major cities is the removal of Morsi from his position as president, and since there are no contacts between Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and the leaders of the protesters, it is now inevitable that sometime between this evening and tomorrow morning the Egyptian military will act on its ultimatum and make its move.

In fact, sources within the Egyptian military are not waiting until Wednesday to outline the plan – or roadmap — the military will announce tomorrow. These sources say the roadmap will consist of five steps:

• Sometime early tomorrow, Wednesday, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of Egypt’s military, will announce that the military has removed Morsi from his position as president.
• Al-Sisi will also announce that the military was disbanding the Egyptian parliament and removing all government ministers from their posts (five or six of them have already resigned in an expression of support for the protesters).
• The Army will nominate technocrats and professionals to run the government departments until new elections are held. It is likely that Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a leader two years ago of the anti-Mubarak movement, will be named interim prime minster.
• The military will announce that the constitution ratified in a referendum last December is annulled, and appoint a panel of jurists to write a new constitution.
• New elections for parliament will be held within six to nine month, with the expectation that the new constitution will be finalized by then.

The new elections will be held in accordance with the new constitution, which will clearly stipulate the roles and responsibilities of the various bodies of the Egyptian political system.

An important driver of the anti-Morsi demonstrations has been a growing anger among educated, secular, and liberal Egyptians over the increased role of Islam, and Islamic courts, in Egyptian life. Rewriting the constitution will be an effort to reduce the role of religion and limit the reach of religious bodies.