Another coup in Egypt?
Egypt's constitutional court has thrown out the results of elections for the country's lower house of parliament that gave Islamists 75% of the seats, and has ruled that Ahmad Shafiq, who was the country's last Prime Minister under Hosni Mubarak, may run for President. Barry Rubin is on top of the situation. He predicts massive violence. The Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court has just invalidated the parliamentary election there. The parliament, 75 percent of whose members were Islamists, is being dissolved. The military junta has taken over total authority. The presidential election is still scheduled for a few dozen hours from now.Barry believes that this entire situation caught the Obama administration off guard.
In short, everything is confused and everything is a mess. All calculations are thrown to the wind. What this appears to be is a new military coup.
Yes, it is under legal cover, but nobody is going to see it as a group of judges — appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak, remember — looking deep into the law books and coming up with a carefully reasoned decision based on precedent. This will be seen by every Islamist — whether Salafi or Muslim Brotherhood — and by most of the liberals — who feel closer to the Islamists than to the government — as if the 2011 revolution has just been reversed.
– This event poses a huge problem for the Obama administration — and I’ll bet it caught them by surprise. Does the U.S. government condemn the military and put sanctions on it, demanding that the Muslim Brotherhood be put into power? There is no easy solution. But we are likely to have the strange situation of an American president fighting to put into power an anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic political force that is opposed to all U.S. interests, because — after all — they did win the election.Yes, I would bet on Obama backing the Brotherhood.
Reuters reports that the Brotherhood has 'accepted' the court ruling, which ruled unconstitutional a provision that denied political rights to anyone who held a senior post in government or ruling party in the last decade of Mubarak's rule.
But some Muslim Brotherhood politicians are less accepting.
A senior Muslim Brotherhood politician said Egypt would enter "a dark tunnel" if the Islamist-dominated parliament was dissolved.Hmmm.
"If parliament is dissolved, the country will enter a dark tunnel - the coming president will face neither a parliament nor a constitution," Erian told Reuters by telephone. "There is a state of confusion and many questions."
Labels: Egyptian democracy, Egyptian elections, Hosni Mubarak, Muslim Brotherhood
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:12 PM
6 Comments:
@sandmonkey is tweeting about this.
https://twitter.com/#!/search/sandmonkey
This means that Hamas will have to fight a two front war against both Egypt and Israel. The question remains is how eager Iran is to back them in a takeover of Egypt given their long track record of failure. In either case, uprisings in Egypt, if they occur will make Sinai an even worse no-mans land than it is now. BTW it will be interesting to see how the western media treats Egyptian military attacks/atrocities committed against Gazans, that is, if they even bother to note them at all.
Did anyone actually believe that the Egyptian Military is going to give up control to the Muslim Brotherhood who will destroy the military (and Egypt) with a disastrous war with Israel.
I did sort of wonder whether the Egyptian military would give up their accepted place of competence among the western militaries... and some of us have been clamoring for a repossession of the U.S. weapon systems they have been allotted over the years. Nonie Darwish describes how this works... military, dictatorships, or Muslim Bros. Which is the worst, I guess is their quandary. Sad.
Hi Carl.
As expected the 'spokeswoman of the Muslim brotherhood' is already condemning the Eyptian Army for their action.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a full transfer of power to elected civilians in Egypt after a court paved the way for the military to assume the parliament’s powers.
“There can be no going back on the democratic transition called for by the Egyptian people,” Clinton told a joint news conference with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and their counterparts from South Korea.
“In keeping with the commitments that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces made to the Egyptian people, we expect to see a full transfer of power to a democratically elected government,” Clinton said.
Clinton said that Egyptians who waged mass protests last year “made it clear that they want a president, a parliament and a constitutional order that will reflect their will and advance their aspirations for political and economic reform.”
“That is exactly what they deserve to have,” she said.
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