Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a product of the Muslim Brotherhood, acted aggressively to centralize power in his own hands, ignored secular groups with significant popular support, and persecuted political opponents. Under his rule, the county’s weak economy got worse, while sectarian divisions deepened. By any standard, he has been a rank failure.
But his extralegal removal Wednesday by the armed forces has to be counted as a disaster.
Morsi was the first elected president Egypt has ever had, and he lasted barely a year in office. Millions of Egyptians celebrated the sudden military takeover, but it creates far more problems than it solves.
One of the vital things the country lacks is a culture of democracy, which requires compromise and restraint on the part of contending groups. Morsi did little to cultivate that culture, and its absence contributed to the uprising against him.
But overturning the results of a democratic election reaffirms what has so long been true in Egypt, which was once captured well by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Morsi had held out the prospect of new parliamentary elections this year or next. Opposition groups had ways to mobilize popular discontent that would strengthen the country’s fledgling democracy. Besides competing in elections, they could have kept putting people in the streets until Morsi agreed to accommodate at least some of their demands.
In announcing the coup, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi installed an interim president and promised new elections. But what value will they have after this? If the voters’ decisions can be undone so easily, what makes anyone think the winner of the next election will be allowed to govern? If Morsi had no right to serve out his term, why would any successor?
The coup does nothing to fix the central result of his tenure – an economy afflicted by rising inflation and unemployment. Whoever takes over will face the same challenge to put it on a sound economic course.
But the task will be even harder for them than it was for Morsi. The political upheaval that has swept the country in recent weeks is not about to end. The Muslim Brotherhood is the country’s biggest and best-organized political group, and it will not meekly submit to this treatment. More likely, it will resort to mass resistance, which could easily lead to violence and even civil war.
A presidential aide posted an ominous but probably accurate message on Wednesday: “In this day and age, no military coup can succeed in the face of sizable popular force without considerable bloodshed.”
Morsi’s enemies claim to offer a pathway out of Egypt’s growing crisis. But they may soon find themselves at a dead end.