Report: Morsy didn't really win the elections
According to my source, who asked to remain anonymous, Ahmed Shafik, the former air force commander and former president Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, actually won the race by a narrow margin. But the army generals -- wanting to ensure that law and order would be upheld following the elections -- feared that if Morsi was defeated, the Muslim Brotherhood would refuse to recognize the results and would end up conducting themselves just as they are now.
The official results, 51.73 percent for Morsi and 48.27% for Shafik, were almost the exact reversal of what actually happened at the polls. After the results were published, we barely heard any calls for protest or opposition among the secular-liberals, while on the religious side -- loyal either to the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafi parties -- voters were happy with their achievement.
Officials thought that the inexperienced Morsi would accept help from the army and would avoid crossing any red lines -- regarding Israel, for example. In reality, what happened was a combination of a pathetic lack of management skills and a string of efforts to rule by the same ideological orientation espoused by a quarter of Egypt's population. Morsi tried running the operation with the help of several associates who were completely incapable of managing anything.
Hmmm. Read it all.Many of Col. Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's fellow generals tried to convince him to spring to action several months ago already, but Sissi wanted to give Morsi, who favored Sissi over other generals as defense minister and commander in chief of the armed forces, the opportunity to prove that what had happened stemmed from the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood president was an amateur.
This actually sounds plausible. The problems are that it's too convenient a narrative in light of what has happened, and I don't consider Beilin a particularly reliable source.
Labels: Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egyptian army, Egyptian democracy, Egyptian elections, Egyptian Revolution, Mohammed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood, Yossi Beilin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:32 PM
1 Comments:
Carl,
I can't vouch for the veracity of the sources, but Beilin was not the first to bring up this rumour. Here is a piece by Michael Youssef from 14 July:
Everything You Wanted to Know About the Egypt Problem that the Media or Politicians Won’t Tell You
Quote:
According to documents discovered after the recent June 30th Revolution, Morsi actually lost the election by more than 200,000 votes. But the American ambassador in Cairo, Anne Patterson, who was carrying the wishes of her bosses in Washington, pressured the military counsel (English Translation) to declare Morsi the winner. The reason? To avoid bloodshed.
The information (if you go to the translated link) comes from Tarek Haggy, a noted Egyptian thinker and analyst. A year ago Heggy was somewhat more careful in this article - but that was a year prior to the 30 June Coup:
Egypt: What Happened?
Although there were rumors that Ahmed Shafeeq won more votes, the SCAF chose to announce Morsy's victory, probably to avoid consequences similar to what happened in Algeria slightly more than 20 years ago, when a civil war broke out after the Algerian president cancelled the results of the parliamentary elections when they seemed to be overwhelmingly in favour of the Islamists. It is rumored that in case Ahmed Shafeeq were to be announced as victorious, a violence would have exploded all over Egypt.
Remember that according to rumours from Egyptian government sources Shafeeq had received a small but winning margin:
Egypt gov't sources....
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