Egyptian military hits the reset button on Egypt’s Arab Spring
The big question now is how will the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters react to the Army’s plan. The Brotherhood has made significant gains since the toppling of Mubarak. The Brotherhood made these gains because of three reasons:
- It can count on the solid support of about 40 percent of Egyptians, especially among the less-educated, poorer, and rural segments of the population.
- The Brotherhood has also benefitted from deep divisions among the different factions of the secular-liberal segment of the population, and the political leaders representing this segment.
- Above all, the Brotherhood benefitted from the fact that after sixty years of military rule, many Egyptians, even if they are not religious, preferred to gamble on the Brotherhood rather than see the military continue in power.
The Brotherhood has overplayed its hand, however. The movement’s authoritarian tendencies, its naked power grab, its indifference to the preferences of the majority of Egyptians who do not subscribe to a strict reading of Islam, and the sheer incompetence of Morsi and his government have now depleted whatever goodwill the Brotherhood had among Egyptians who do not subscribe to its ideology.
The military, on the other hand, has proved itself to be more astute. It has studiously avoided intervening in politics since the fall of Mubarak in February 2011, while tacitly making arrangements with the Brotherhood to allow it – the military — to keep its privileged status and most of the benefits it had enjoyed under Mubarak.
The result is that public opinion in Egypt is now much more hostile to the Brotherhood and much more willing to give the military and its plans the benefit of the doubt.
The Brotherhood, its back against the wall, may agree to sacrifice Morsi in order to keep some of its other gains, but it is difficult to see the protesters, and the military, agreeing to anything short of a significant rollback of the Brotherhood’s sway. The issue is not denying the Brotherhood its rightful place in Egyptian politics – something Egypt’s military rulers had done for decades – but rather denying the Brotherhood the ability to manipulate the various components of Egypt’s government system – the courts, constitution, voting rules, etc. – in order artificially to increase the Brotherhood’s influence while removing all checks and balances which would keep its power in check.
Two years ago, a plan by the military to remove a president, fire the government, disband parliament, and rewrite the constitution would have been perceived as a crude attempt by the military to perpetuate its influence and power. After a year of the Muslim Brotherhood in power, such a plan by the military is greeted as the last best hope for democracy in Egypt.
Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire
