The Egyptian revolution, begun on January 25 2011, remains unfinished. That became painfully clear on November 22, 2012, when the democratically elected Mohammed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party (whose membership is largely made up of Muslim Brotherhood members and those sympathetic to it) issued a decree granting himself temporary executive powers above judicial review. This bold and anti-democratic move was met with immediate resistance by large, angry segments of the Egyptian public. Street battles between young people and riot police that had been ongoing then escalated. Opposition parties next came to Tahrir Square, the iconic site of the revolution, and pitched tents, in a scene reminiscent of the 18 days of the revolution in 2011 that brought down Hosni Mubarak and his government. Massive demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people followed, calling on Morsi to rescind his decree. Egypt hasn't seen this kind of mobilization since the early days of its revolution.
In response, the Muslim Brotherhood held its own protest in support of Morsi in front of Cairo University a few days later, and opposition demonstrators held another massive march days after that and marched to the presidential palace. Muslim Brotherhood partisans came to them looking for a fight, and a battle -- Egyptian civilian on Egyptian civilian -- ensued. Hundreds were wounded and at least 6 people were killed. This tragic turn of events moved the revolution into fundamentally different territory. Almost all of the violence since the beginning of the revolution has been between the state security forces or the military and a public demanding its freedom. Now Egyptians were fighting Egyptians. The development is a worrying one, and the current climate in Egypt is extremely tense.
I can write this with certainty because I was in Cairo for much of this very recent history. I arrived in Cairo on November 22, the day Morsi's decreed his new powers, and witnessed the street battles firsthand. I walked through the tent city at Tahrir Square and talked to demonstrators to get a sense of what they wanted. And I was in Tahrir for the massive demonstrations and felt the extraordinary energy of a lively and diverse public that will no longer accept the patronizing rule of autocratic authority.
Morsi argues that he needs the power to be above the law because the judiciary is blocking his ability to rule the country. There is some truth to this claim. The court already dissolved the lower house of parliament for procedural reasons, and his appointed committee to draft a new constitution was, in all likelihood, also about to be disbanded by the court. Although many judges were active for years in opposing Mubarak, some judges in high positions in Egypt are Mubarak appointees and seem opposed to the very idea of Morsi, with his close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, as president of the republic. With no functioning legislature and a competition between the judicial and executive branch, the government in Egypt is in state of deep paralysis.
But there are also many good reasons to be suspicious of Morsi's presidency. In the short four months of his presidency thus far, he has already failed to convince many Egyptians that he is a president capable of solving Egypt's myriad problems or that he willing to act as leader for all Egyptians. The economy has ground to a near halt and prices for essentials have risen precipitously since the revolution. Unemployment remains dangerously high and state security forces are still accused of torture and abuse, as they were under Mubarak. But more importantly, there is a suspicion that Morsi is dead set on making Egypt not a state for all of its citizens but one that favors the Muslim Brotherhood and its vision for the country. There have been indications of this along the way. Morsi didn't attend the Papal enthronement after Egypt's Coptic Christian selected a new leader, for example. But the contentious drafting of a new constitution, the haste by which it was passed by the Constitutional Committee, and its very substance indicate a document and procedure that are deeply flawed and a poor blueprint upon which to base a new Egypt. The draft constitution fails to sufficiently protect freedom of expression; allows for military trials of civilians; limits freedom of religion to Muslims, Christians, and Jews (making other religious minorities and atheists vulnerable); and waters down women's rights.
Despite what you may hear, the conflict in Egypt is not between Muslims and non-Muslims. Many opposing Morsi are themselves devout Muslims who in principle don't agree with the Muslim Brotherhood's views on the role of religion in the state and see his decree as reminiscent of the Mubarak era. Nor is it between the elite and the non-elite or limited to Cairo, since demonstrations are currently occurring nationwide and clearly include a broad spectrum of the Egyptian public. On December 6, Morsi addressed the nation and blamed much of the current crisis on fifth columnists and foreign hands. Not only did this sound like he was attempting to divert responsibility for the crisis, he also sounded like a tape recording of every tin-pot dictator, who always use the same excuses at the time of social unrest.
The essence of the problem in Egypt is that there are no accountable institutions of governance since the fall of Mubarak, and without institutions, politics has nowhere to go but to the street. The fundamental error following the initial 18 days of revolution in 2011 happened when the military took over the country and then held legislative and presidential elections before a new constitution was written and adopted. A caretaker government was needed then, and is needed now, in Egypt, to reform all the major institutions of government, cleanse them of the old regime, and establish a new legal system that respects the rights of all Egyptians and sets a high standard of accountability for the government. As Egypt currently stands, however, trust between the more religiously oriented and the basically secular-minded political factions is now completely non-existent. What this means is that whoever is in charge will be eyed suspiciously by the other and no progress can happen. If and when major changes are proposed, they will be met with skepticism and outrage that the rules are being gerrymandered for specific gain and not for the good of the nation as a whole. Only a caretaker government -- one that is made up of the many segments of Egyptian society, peopled by experts who cannot run in the next election, and empanelled with the power to produce major reform -- will be able to bring about lasting stability and a just social order to Egypt.
Unfortunately, that outcome is almost completely unlikely to happen now. And even if the draft constitution is accepted by the majority of the population in a national referendum, crises will continue in Egypt for the foreseeable future. The divisions in Egyptian society are becoming clearer and growing deeper and will not soon go away. What is clear is that whoever rules Egypt must represent all of Egypt, in its messy complexity. But what is also evident, and what I witnessed firsthand, is the incredible energy and drive of the Egyptian people to no longer accept autocratic rule without a fight. I'm worried about what will happen in Egypt, where my extended family lives, in the coming weeks and months. But I also understand that the revolutionary spirit of Egyptians is still alive and well and will not die. Egyptians are demanding now what they demanded back in 2011 and they won't give up until they get it. And what exactly are they insisting on? It is perhaps best summed up by the slogan of the revolution: bread, freedom, and social justice!