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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Wed Dec 12 01:38:51 2012, in response to Egypt Revolts!, posted by JayZeeBMT on Fri Jan 28 16:01:55 2011.
fiogf49gjkf0d Would help to reference something that actually existed, an tUasal Ó Suilleabháin. Under the MB, there was never democracy. But all they can do is dream rather than face reality, even as they illustrate reality.
Daily Therion
Can Egypt's Democracy Survive?Issandr El Amrani details the Muslim Brotherhood's militia-like role in last week's violence:[Morsi] has pushed himself increasingly to rely solely on Islamists, and if this referendum takes places he will have only them to rely on for the rest of his administration. Moreover, he and his party last Wednesday incited people to go out into the street and "defend the presidency" — an unjustifiable action with predictable consequences (and an unnecessary one, after all he has the Republican Guards even if interior ministry forces are not to be trusted). Muslim Brothers went out there and held (and allegedly tortured) protestors for 12 hours, on presidency grounds, to extract confessions of a conspiracy. Morsi referred to these as "evidence" of a conspiracy in his speech the following day, but his own public prosecutor released these people. Ahdaf Soueif says Morsi has failed to lead the Egyptian people:The demands of the revolution were clear: bread, freedom, social justice. Concerning "freedom", Morsi has refused to restructure the state's security apparatus; he appointed as interior minister the man who'd been Cairo's police chief in 2011 when protesters were massacred in the city's streets. People continue to be killed in jail and in police stations across the country.
Concerning the economy it's become clear that the Brotherhood's programme is basically Mubarak's: Morsi visited China accompanied by some of the biggest business allies of Mubarak; the banking communities talk of deals already being made by high-ranking officials and their relatives, and borrowing from the IMF and the World Bank is suddenly not sinful. Meanwhile, the president is able to issue the wildest constitutional declarations but is unable to make the smallest step towards establishing minimum and maximum wages. Along the same lines, Rami G. Khouri considers the Morsi cohort to be amateurs:The Muslim Brotherhood leaders who have spent much of the last 25 years in and out of jail were catapulted into the presidency without any previous experience in managing national politics. President Mohammad Mursi is revealing his inability to act as the president of all Egyptians and the shepherd of a historic constitutional transition in which basic governance institutions are being built. Unlike Nelson Mandela who spent decades in jail and then showed his compassion, flexibility and statesmanship when he became president of South Africa, Mursi seems focused on pushing through his agenda (presumably also the Brotherhood’s) and is unable at this stage to act as the magnanimous leader of all Egyptians. Ahmad Shokr goes over the Islamist-drafted constitution:[It] does not reflect a democratic consensus, as many in the opposition have argued that it should. It reflects an emerging relationship between the Muslim Brothers and existing state institutions, like the army, along with a great deal of appeasement of the salafis, whom the Brothers have embraced as junior partners. The rush to a referendum suggests a deep anxiety among the state elites about continuing instability and a desire to seize the opportunity to cement a new political framework as quickly as possible. More worrisome than the text itself is the vision these leaders have for which voices count and which alliances matter in the new Egypt. Should this vision go unchallenged, the losers would be all those who have been calling for more pluralistic and inclusive system.
In his December 6 post, Jason Brownlee writes, "It is important that the ideological debate between liberalism and Islamism not be seen as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism." Perhaps recent events in Egypt call for a rethinking of these terms. True, liberalism and democracy are not automatic counterparts, no more than Islamism and authoritarianism are. But the battle in Egypt is indeed one between a democracy that reflects the country’s political diversity and a remodeled authoritarianism, led by the Muslim Brothers and their allies, that seeks to circumscribe it. Another area of concern is women's rights, as Vivienne Walt explains:Women’s organizations have for months pressed to have an article [added to the constitution] that guaranteed women’s equality only insofar as it did not clash with Islamic values deleted from Egypt’s draft constitution. Now [the sentence "the principles of Shari‘a are the main source of legislation" has been removed] — but any specific assurance of women’s equality has also been excised. In its place is a clause guaranteeing government-funded maternal and child health care (something most Americans don’t have), but those benefits are offered specifically in order "to preserve the genuine character of the Egyptian family" and to balance "the duties of a woman towards her family and her work." That, says Coleman, is "a not-so-subtle code for keeping women in a traditional role."
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