What’s a leader to do?
Leader in lose-lose situation as Egypt becomes more polarized and ungovernable
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is in a lose-lose situation, writes Matthew Fisher,
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has been fiercely criticized for imposing draconian emergency laws that have given the army special powers to hold citizens without charge in three cities on the Suez Canal.
But Morsi is in a lose-lose situation. If he had done nothing after a weekend of wild riots in Port Said left 50 dead, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm would surely have been condemned as too weak to continue overseeing Egypt’s constantly endangered transition from dictatorship to democracy.
The northeastern coastal city went berserk Saturday after 21 young men were convicted for the part they played in the deaths of 74 football fans during a brawl at a match 11 months ago — which was five months before Morsi came to power. Police retreated as the latest fighting spun out of control, according to reports in the Egyptian media.
While a large number of protesters in Port Said prepared to defy a strict curfew late Monday, six more Egyptians have died in unrelated political demonstrations elsewhere over the past few days. There were tear gas attacks Monday in Cairo, too. They were provoked by stone-throwing mobs of young people near the capital’s iconic Tahrir Square.
When Egypt was still under military rule last February, the police also made themselves scarce when rival soccer gangs from Port Said and Cairo, with long records of violence, clobbered each other. Then, and again over the weekend, there were rumours across Egypt that forces still loyal to ousted president Hosni Mubarak orchestrated the trouble. To try to restore order in Port Said, Morsi sent in the army, which is held in much higher regard here than the police.
The National Salvation Front, which is an uncomfortable mix of liberal opposition parties, has inevitably spotted a political opportunity in the mayhem at Port Said. The Front’s many secular Muslims from Cairo, as well as the country’s Christian community, have sought to connect the unrest there with its own long list of complaints.
Morsi offered to meet the NSF Monday. But the opposition refused talks of any kind unless the president forms a broad national unity government and calls fresh presidential elections or, at the very least, rewrites the country’s new constitution, which was rammed through with almost no consultation last fall.
Although Morsi has replaced Mubarak as Egypt’s favourite whipping boy, the reason the country’s youths have been on fire has little to do with the new ruler or his pro-Islamist policies. The economic prospects of young Egyptians have been grim for years. According to statistics compiled by the government, the unemployment rate of those between the ages of 15 and 29 reached a staggering 77.5 per cent last year — against an official national unemployment rate of 12.6 per cent.
Given those appalling figures, the rage expressed by young men in interminable street battles over the past few months is understandable.
However, it is unfair to think that Morsi could have turned Egypt’s decrepit economy around after only a few months in power, especially with the International Monetary Fund insisting that his government must drastically cut spending to qualify for a long-delayed further loan of $4.8 billion.
The president has not made any of this easier by antagonizing the opposition with a constitution that did little to safeguard the rights and freedoms of Christians or women. But Morsi is in a straitjacket because the Brotherhood’s rank and file do not want him to be conciliatory. If he caves in, some of Brotherhood members and the quarter of the country who support the more extreme Salafi movement are just as likely to react violently.
As Egypt becomes more polarized and ungovernable, it is becoming a more intolerable place. The opposition, which now includes some former admirers of the Mubarak regime, represents 35 per cent of the country at best. Islamists make up the rest.
Short of a military coup in the name of public order, which would enrage Islamists and many secularists, the only option at the moment is for Morsi to forge a deal with the secularists that would exclude the Salafis. While there is no love lost between the rival Islamist groups, such a move would be perilous for the Brotherhood because it draws support from the same pool of conservative rural voters as the Salafis.
The recent images of thugs run amok in Port Said have once again caught the world’s attention, but events there are a bloody sideshow. However, the deadly riots are important because they further sullied Morsi’s reputation by forcing him to resort to two widely loathed authoritarian measures that have reminded many Egyptians of how Mubarak solved problems.
Morsi is trapped between Islamist hardliners and secular liberals at a dangerous time when the country’s courts and security forces, which have not been reformed much since Mubarak lost power, do not seem terribly enthusiastic about protecting the new president or his wobbling revolution.