Catching up on Egypt
Some standouts from the 40 open tabs in my browser: Baheyya pins down the nefarious rhetoric of Sisi and the coup-sters: she observes that the meaningless cheerleading phrase “legitimacy of the people” has replaced the more important and actionable concept of “sovereignty of the people.” One of the activists I’ve been following for my book, the Social Democratic Party’s Basem Kamel, said to me last week when we talked about the coup-revolution debate, “The military has had the same power the whole time.” If Sisi tries to take direct power, Basem Kamel said, people would have to take to the streets. But I think Baheyya very succintly shows that the military is winning a long-term game, in which its narrative will prevail and it will remain Egypt’s ultimate arbiter. Sadly.
This builds on her previous post, which argues (convincingly, in my view) that Egypt’s deep state is engineering a wholesale rejection of messy politics in favor of neat military rule.
With their July 3 coup, Egypt’s new military overlords and their staunch American backers are playing an age-old game, the game of turning the public against the ineluctable bickering, inefficiency, gridlock, and intense conflict that is part and parcel of a free political life, so that a disillusioned, fatigued people will pine for the stability and order that the military then swoops in to provide.
Meanwhile Farah at Rebel Economy grounds us in the unrelenting horror show of Egyptian reality. She neatly portrays the crises that keep quality of life so low, and which are sure to bedevil all of Egypt’s successive governments, and observes that Sisi’s SCAF has taken possession of a rotting hot potato.
Ignore the economy at your peril. That is the lesson Arab leaders of transitional countries should learn from the Egyptian military’s removal of Mohammed Morsi from power, but one that continues to fall on deaf ears.
There’s tons more worth reading.
