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Egypt

ElBaradei set to become interim Egyptian prime minister in post-Morsi gamble for ‘reset’

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UPDATE: Egyptian officials are now distancing themselves from earlier reports that Mohamed ElBaradei will be Egypt’s next prime minister — that doesn’t incredibly change the analysis, though.  ElBaradei’s ties to the West, not to mention the other drawbacks mentioned below, help us understand why Egypt’s new military-backed government may have had second thoughts about ElBaradei, especially if they are hoping to bring Salafist Al-Nour Party leaders into the fold.

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Mohamed ElBaradei is set to become Egypt’s interim prime minister just four days after Mohammed Morsi was deposed as from the Egyptian presidency by the country’s armed forces.

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ElBaradei, the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is a well-known figure whose international credibility runs far deeper than that of newly-installed interim president Adly Mansour, formerly the chief justice of the Egyptian constitutional court.  His selection as prime minister will bring instant gravitas to the emerging post-Morsi regime in Egypt, at least vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

But deploying ElBaradei into power is not risk-free — for either the new government or for ElBaradei’s reputation.

The danger is that his selection won’t be enough to ameliorate the governance crisis that has now accelerated with the Egyptian military’s decision to remove Morsi.  After all, though Morsi’s government had few allies after its troubled year in office, it’s hard to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood still doesn’t command the largest bloc of supporters within Egypt, and their wrath at the military’s turn against the Muslim Brotherhood may not be soothed by the appointment of any caretaker, no matter his seniority or even-handedness.  ElBaradei’s appointment comes just a day after pro-Morsi supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood staged a day of protest — the ‘Friday of rejection’ — demanding the return of Morsi to the presidency that met with tense, sometimes violent, resistance from the Egyptian military.  It’s too early to predict that Egypt is descending into a kind of civil war — despite a troubling lynching of four Shi’a Muslims last month, the largely Sunni Egypt doesn’t really feature strong Sunni-Shi’a schisms that have propelled sectarian violence more recently in countries like Iraq and Syria, and most Egyptians, even its more conservative Islamists, hold the military in high regard, for now at least.  But there’s no guarantee that ElBaradei can keep political violence from spiraling further out of control, propelling ever more turmoil to Egyptian industry, trade and tourism.

Even if no one will miss the ineptitude of the Morsi government, ElBaradei’s new power doesn’t come imbued with much of a mandate.  Though Egypt’s post-Mubarak transition was troubled from its inception, the successful conduct of free and fair presidential elections last summer was a key milestone on Egypt’s road toward a more democratic state.  While it’s true that the anti-Morsi protests had ballooned to a size even larger than those against Mubarak in February 2011, the more relevant factor is that Mubarak was never elected in a free election the way that Morsi was only a year ago.  So while political scientists debate whether last week’s events amounted to a coup (spoiler: yes, of course it was a coup, even if the U.S. administration doesn’t use the word ‘coup’), ElBaradei and his military supporters will come to power having undermined the most visible democratic credential that Egyptians could boast since the Arab Spring began.

By contrast, though French president François Hollande remains incredibly unpopular after just one year into a five-year term,  no one seriously thinks the French military is set to remove him from office to install a center-right president in France.  Moreover, ElBaradei will become Egypt’s new leader after having pulled out of last year’s presidential race, and it was not entirely clear that ElBaradei would have won in any event.  But it would have been better for the country today if ElBaradei had remained in the race to make a full-throated case for a secular, liberal democratic Egypt and to bring the fight to Morsi on the basis of the merits of his own ideas, not on the coattails of the military’s guns.

Unlike former foreign minister and Arab Council secretary-general Amr Moussa and former air force chief Ahmed Shafiq, ElBaradei is not tainted as felool — the ‘remnants’ of the government that Hosni Mubarak led from the 1980s until 2011.  But as the Tamarod (‘Rebellion’) movement has gathered steam in its efforts to oust Morsi, ElBaradei has managed to unite a disparate coalition of anti-Morsi interests, including Moussa, much of the former military establishment, elements of the so-called ‘deep state’ and supporters of former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, whose leftist, Nasser-style nationalism nearly vaulted him into last June’s presidential runoff.  If Monsour, ElBaradei and the new interim government succeed in organizing a new presidential election, Sabahi would certainly be the frontrunner to win it (unless ElBaradei himself runs, though he’s said he’s not interested in the presidency for himself).

As ElBaradei has noted in the days leading up to and following Morsi’s forced removal, the Morsi presidency was far from perfect — ElBaradei had routinely accused Morsi of becoming a ‘pharaoh’ in office, and he mocked Morsi’s Islamist agenda by noting acidly that ‘you can’t eat sharia.’  Though Morsi won only a narrow victory last June over Shafiq, he triumphed by assembling a broader coalition that transcended his own Muslim Brotherhood supporters, and, in recognition of that reality, Morsi initially called  for a broad inclusion of diverse views in formulating policies in office.  One of his first steps in August 2012, in firing longtime army chief and defense minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and replacing him with Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, was an incredibly successful masterstroke, temporarily at least, in marrying the political interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military.  Ironically, it was El-Sisi, who owed his position as commander-in-chief of the Egyptian armed forces to Morsi, who green-lighted the action that toppled Morsi.

But as Bassem Sabry explained in illuminating detail on Thursday in Al-Monitor, the clear point at which Morsi lost control over the country was his ill-fated decision last November to push through a vote on the country’s new constitution.   Continue reading ElBaradei set to become interim Egyptian prime minister in post-Morsi gamble for ‘reset’ →

Egypt

What comes next for Egypt

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PARIS, France — Honestly, I cannot tell you  (and no one outside Egypt can tell you) what comes next for the country.egypt_flag_new

If the army has decided that Mohammed Morsi is no longer the head of state, well, Morsi’s probably no longer the head of state.  That’s significant, and it’s probably the most significant moment since former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power over two years ago in February 2011.  It’s even more significant because Morsi himself elevated Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to the top of the Egyptian military last summer.  Revolutionaries who wanted a liberal democracy will be happy with today’s apparent putsch by the Egyptian military after days of illiberal restraints upon anti-Morsi protestors. Proponents of pure democracy, however, will be unhappy.  After all, despite the dissatisfaction with Morsi, he was the duly elected president of the Egyptian electorate.

Though Egypt now seems headed toward a state where a secular military ‘guarantees’ the Egyptian democracy — giving the Egyptian military the role that Turkey’s military played for nearly a century in Turkish democracy — it’s not certain that Egypt is anywhere near the end of its revolutionary tumult.  If anything, its future is now more likely violent and uncertain.

What comes next is incredibly unsure.  In the immediate future, Aldy Mansour seems sets to become the choice of the Egyptian military as head of state.  But who knows if the Muslim Brotherhood will contest that decision.

In the meanwhile, keep an eye on two persons.

The first is Ahmed Shafiq, who only narrowly lost the presidency to Morsi last year.  He was quite clearly the preferred choice of the Egyptian military, and if it wants to install a leader with the most amount of democratic legitimacy, Shafiq is their man.

The other is Hamdeen Sabahi.  If the army looks to place a civilian leader into power, it would be Sabahi, who placed a narrow third to Morsi and Shafiq in the 2012 presidential election, and who has assumed a position as the most credible opposition leader to Morsi.  As a nationalist political leader, it was Sabahi who seemed like, more than either Morsi or Shafiq, the next potential Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only 2012 presidential candidate with the scope and ambition to chart a course toward a new era of Egyptian dominance of the Arab world.

Egypt, it seems pretty clear, won’t put up with a government led by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces for the next year.  It has economic problems that, unlike in 2011, it can no longer push aside.  Egypt needs a full-time president, with a full-time agenda for the Egyptian economy and, Morsi, with his increasingly pro-Islamist agenda, was simply not in a position to fulfill that need.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi have failed to make even the smallest progress.  So the armed forces will be looking to the civilian most likely to succeed where Morsi failed — and that’s more likely than not going to be Shafiq or Sabahi.

We’re in for a very long 48 hours or more in Egypt — no one can tell you what will happen.  Uncharted territory.

Egypt, Ethiopia

Will Egypt and Ethiopia come to blows over the Renaissance Dam and water politics?

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Though you might think of the Nile as a primarily Egyptian river in Africa, its roots go much deeper.  The White Nile originates far within sub-Saharan Africa at Lake Victoria, winding up through Juba, the capital of the newly-minted country of South Sudan, and the Blue Nile originates at Lake Tana in northeastern Ethiopia, and it joins the While Nile near Khartoum, the capital of (north) Sudan. egypt_flag_newethiopia_640

But the rights to the water originating from the Blue Nile have become the subject of an increasingly tense showdown between Egypt and Ethiopia, with Ethiopia moving forward to bring its long-planned Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam into operating, sparking a diplomatic showdown between the two countries and a crisis between two relatively new leaders, both of whom took office in summer 2012 — Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.

The Renaissance Dam and the politics of the Nile were no less fraught between former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and the late Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi.  But with the project moving forward, Hailemariam and Morsi are locked in a diplomatic tussle that could escalate into something much worse.  Morsi has recently warned Ethiopia that ‘all options are open,’ which conceivably includes an Egyptian air attack to bomb the Renaissance Dam, which would initiate military confrontation between the second-most and third-most populous countries on the continent of Africa.

The Renaissance Dam is Meles’s legacy project and, with a price tag of between $4 billion and $5 billion, it’s embedded with an atypical amount of Ethiopian national pride.  When it is completed, the dam will make Ethiopia a huge hydroelectric producer, perhaps Africa’s largest energy producer, with an estimated generation of 6,000 megawatts of electricity.  To put that in perspective, the Hoover Dam in the southwestern United States has a maximum generation of around 2,100 megawatts and Egypt’s own Aswan High Dam has a maximum of around 2,500 megawatta, while China’s Three Gorges Dam has a maximum capacity of 22,500 megawatts.

Egypt’s chief concern is that the dam will reduce the amount of water that currently flows from the Blue Nile to the Nile Delta, and Ethiopia has already started to divert the course of the Blue Nile to start filling the Renaissance Dam’s reservoir (see below a map of the Nile and its tributaries).  While that process is expected to temporarily reduce the amount of water that flows to Sudan and to Egypt for up to three years, Egyptian officials have voiced concerns that the Renaissance Dam might permanently reduce the flow of the Nile through Egypt, despite technical reassurances to the contrary.  Moreover, Egyptian officials point to colonial-era treaties with the United Kingdom from 1929 and 1959 that purported to divide the Nile’s riparian rights solely as between Egypt and the Sudan, without regard for Ethiopian, Ugandan, Tanzanian or other upriver national claims.  Ethiopian anger at exclusion from the 1959 Nile basin negotiations led, in part, to the decision by Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I to claim the independence of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church from the Coptic Orthodox Church based in Alexandria, Egypt.

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It’s clear however, where Ethiopia’s Nile neighbors stand on the issue — the leaders of South Sudan and Uganda have voiced their approval for the project, and even Sudan, which will also mark some reduction in Nile water while the dam is constructed, is inclined to support it, which will result in a wider source of crucial electricity throughout the Horn of Africa, east Africa and beyond.  Ironically, it could even be Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, currently under indictment by the International Criminal Court for atrocities stemming from the Darfur humanitarian crisis in the mid-2000s, who has the regional credibility with both Cairo and Addis Ababa to diffuse the crisis.  Continue reading Will Egypt and Ethiopia come to blows over the Renaissance Dam and water politics? →

Iran

What U.S. commentators get wrong about Iran — and why Iran’s election matters

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Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes in The Atlantic this morning that Iran has a ‘presidential selection,’ not a presidential election.Iran Flag Icon

That will come as some surprise to Iran’s 75 million citizens, many of whom have turned out today to participate in the first of what is likely to be two votes to determine who will succeed outgoing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Moreover, the ultimate winner of the election will pay a vital role in shaping policy for the struggling Iranian economy over the next four years and, more crucially for the United States, help determine the tone that Iran will take with respect to ongoing P5+1 negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Iran’s democracy is, shall we say, less than perfect from any objective standards of democracy — Western, Islamic or otherwise.

But Dubowitz is essentially arguing that the election has no consequences:

But Iranian voters know better. The election may indicate changes in the interfactional balance of power within the regime, and a victory by [Hassan] Rouhani or [Mohammad Baqer] Qalibaf may temper the tone of the regime’s nuclear intransigence, but there will be no change in substance. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, election in reality means selection. [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei will remain in charge.

But that Khamenei will remain in charge is a coals-to-Newcastle argument.  Today’s election is for president, not for Supreme Leader.

We may not like it, but the dual roles of the Supreme Leader and the Iranian president are part of the system of Iran’s government for over three decades.  You can, perhaps, think of the Supreme Leader as a strong head of state and the president as the head of government.  It’s perhaps easier to think of Iran’s president as akin to a prime minister — Iran had a prime minister in the 1980s, but the office ended in 1989, largely because of the overlap between the president and the prime minister.  It’s arguable that Iran’s president has more independence from the Supreme Leader than, in effect, French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has from French president François Hollande.

Perhaps Iran’s is not the most representative system, but it’s more representative than the dictator-for-life model that Hosni Mubarak effected in Egypt for three decades with the full bipartisan support of U.S. policymakers.  It’s also more representative than the current system of selecting the leadership of the People’s Republic of China as well.

Dubowitz is right that there are many reasons to cast doubt on the role of the Guardian Council, a gatekeeper body comprised of 12 members, six appointed by the Supreme Leader and six by Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament.  Despite hundreds of hopeful presidential candidates, the Guardian Council approved just eight candidates to run in today’s election, though two have already dropped out.  The Guardian Council has never approved a woman to run for the presidency, and its dubious refusal to approve former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate seen as the best shot in 2013 for reformist-minded voters, calls into question the even-handedness of the Guardian Council.

It also refused to allow Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei to run, though many believe Mashaei’s campaign was a stalking-horse candidacy designed to provide Ahmadinejad a way to continue to influence policy despite a limit of two consecutive presidential terms.

Without doubt, these disqualifications (and Guardian Council interference in other minor elections, such as for Tehran’s city council, and in Iran’s parliamentary elections last year) call into question whether Iran’s odd style of democracy is as robust as it once was.  Remember that eight years ago, the relatively unknown Ahmadinejad leapt over many more experienced rivals into the presidency on a conservative and populist agenda, and 16 years ago, reformist dark-horse candidate Mohammed Khatami won the presidency in a landslide as well. Continue reading What U.S. commentators get wrong about Iran — and why Iran’s election matters →

United States

Remembering Medgar Evers and the fight for civil rights

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Exactly 50 years ago today — on June 12, 1963 — a young 37-year-old civil rights activist was brutally shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.USflag

That young activist, Medgar Evers, had spent his tragically truncated life as the field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a role in which he helped James Meredith break the segregation barrier in order to become the first black male to enroll in the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Evers today has entered the pantheon of American heroes.  His remains lie in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.  If you fly into Jackson today, you’ll fly into Mississippi’s largest airport, which is now named in honor of Evers.  But at the time, his murderer was twice freed after a jury, comprised solely of white men, refused to convict him — he was convicted only in 1994 on the basis of new evidence.

In the 50 years since Evers death, the United States has become a much more equal place — after all, it elected its first non-white president five years ago, and it’s had two black secretaries of state.  The world of white privilege and segregation that Evers — and Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders of the 1960s — fought to tear down is unrecognizable today.

But that doesn’t mean the cause for civil rights is over.  Within the United States alone, black Americans remain far behind, as a group, on terms of socioeconomic gains.  Immigrants to the United States, many of whom came to this country as young children, remain in painful legal limbo.  Gay and lesbian Americans struggle not just for the right to same-sex marriage, but the right to live, work and exist without prejudice.  A U.S. prison population in excess of seven million people (though that number is starting to decline), many of who are in prison for non-violent offenses, faces innumerable challenges to even their basic safety behind bars.  The revelations of the NSA and PRISM programs show that the U.S. government continues to push forward with new surveillance tools that, though they may enhance homeland security, innumerably reduce global privacy rights.

That highlights the fact that the lines between greater civil rights in the United States and greater civil rights globally has blurred.  In many ways, the work of Medgar Evers is now a broader, globalized struggle.  U.S. activists work alongside European, Asia, Arab and African activists to challenge inequality worldwide.

  • In Mauritania and elsewhere in the Sahel, the fight continues against the continued practice of human slavery.
  • In Turkey, the crackdown this week of protesters at Taksim Square by prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have highlighted the fact that the biggest threat isn’t creeping Islamism, but the more garden-variety illiberal disregard for basic civil rights like freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and deeper abuses of power that have hollowed out Turkey’s democracy.
  • Even as western Europe enters a world of same-sex marriage equality, many pockets of the world feature significant hurdles for gay and lesbian individuals — sub-Saharan Africa continues to treat gay activists with brutality and just yesterday, Russia passed a troublingly broad anti-gay law.
  • In Iran, moderate presidential candidate Hassan Rowhani has pushed for the loosening of political and cultural censorship and greater political freedoms within the framework of Iran’s existing Islamic republic.
  • In the People’s Republic of China, residents of Hong Kong marched last week on the occasion of the anniversary of the government crackdown on Tiananmen Square in 1989.
  • The Arab Spring protests of 2011 — from Bahrain to Tunisia to Egypt — have made political participation unavoidable throughout the Arab world, even if new majoritarian Islamist governments now face new civil rights challenges in finding a way to make Islamic democracy work without introducing new elements of religious, political and gender-based inequality.
  • A few hundred miles from the coast of Florida, Haitians continue to suffer from some of the worst poverty in the world, exacerbated by the tolls taken by the 2010 earthquake.

So as today’s more globalized fight for civil rights continues, it’s worth reflecting today to remember Evers and an entire generation of Americans who defined much of the content of what we think of as ‘civil rights’ in their fight for racial equality in the United States half a century ago.

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Bottom photo credit to Kevin Lees — Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, May 2012. 

Egypt

El-Mursi Hegazy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Egyptian Economy

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While most of the attention on Egypt in the past couple of months has been over constitutional battles — president Mohammed Morsi’s decree asserting extraordinary powers and a hastily called referendum on what’s now become Egypt’s constitution — it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the Egyptian economy has gone from bad to worse.egypt_flag_new

Indeed, since the initial Tahrir Square revolts began two years ago that ultimately pushed former president Hosni Mubarak out of office, the Egyptian economy has taken a backseat to more philosophical arguments about Egypt’s future and its governance.

But Egypt’s sclerotic economy remains, perhaps, a key ingredient in determining how Egypt’s political and constitutional debate will ultimately be resolved, and it’s probably one of the most important issues that U.S. and international policymakers should be watching as they try to discern what’s happening in Egypt and in the Middle East more broadly.

So with the third round of parliamentary elections in two years set for this spring, which will certainly feature another round of debate about the weighty issues of the role of Islamism in government, the relationship between the presidency and the Egyptian army, the separation of powers in Egyptian government, and the freedoms and rights that should be granted to Egyptians, Morsi’s cabinet reshuffle over the weekend is an opportunity to remember that Egypt’s economic condition will feature prominently as well.

Morsi replaced 10 of the cabinet members (retaining the current prime minister Hisham Qandil, a former minister for of water resources and irrigation), but the most important appointment was a new Egyptian finance minister after what’s been seen as a disappointing six months for Morsi and the Egyptian economy.

Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy, a professor of economics at Alexandria University and an expert on Islamic finance, will replace Momtaz El-Saeed, who had served as Egypt’s top financial officer since December 2011 and who had served as a budget undersecretary in the finance ministry during the Mubarak era.  We don’t know much more about him other than that, although any change is probably a good sign, given the horrific state of Morsi’s economic policy.

Although Hegazy doesn’t have ties to the old Mubarak regime, and he is seen as much closer to the Muslim Brotherhood (جماعة الاخوان المسلمين‎) than his predecessor, his selection is curious, because he’s not incredibly well-known, and certainly, not someone who would have immediately reassured international investors or the International Monetary Fund (in the way that, say, the appointment of Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of investment manager PIMCO would be).

At the top of Hegazy’s to-do list will be to secure a postponed IMF package for up to $4.8 billion in loans — the package was signed in November, but later postponed in December amid the political tumult surrounding the constitutional referendum.

That gives IMF managing director Christine Lagarde (pictured above in Egypt) incredible influence over the Egyptian economy, and it means that the tax increases that Morsi had been preparing before December, not to mention additional austerity measures, are all but certain to be enacted.  With parliamentary elections expected in April, I’m not sure we can really depend on austerity measures being implemented too soon.

On the other hand, if the IMF deal isn’t sealed shortly, Egypt’s economy could face a meltdown that would also harm Morsi and the Brotherhood, which will contest the upcoming elections through its Freedom and Justice Party (حزب الحرية والعدال).  With the country’s foreign reserves rapidly declining, Qatar provided a $2 billion loan to Egypt on Tuesday, with an additional grant of $500 million in immediate aid.  Qatar has taken the most active role in keeping Egypt afloat since the end of the Mubarak era — last September, it committed $8 billion for power, iron and steel investments at the northern end of the Suez Canal and $10 billion for additional tourism infrastructure.

For Morsi, the sweet spot is securing the IMF deal ASAP, with austerity measures expected to begin very shortly after the spring elections — he gets the institutional benefits of stabilizing Egypt’s economy without taking the politically painful steps that the IMF may ultimately require under the deal.

That timing may be fine with the IMF, though, so long as Morsi commits to raising additional revenue and other structural reforms shortly after the April elections.  Certainly, the IMF must realize that a deal will boost the chances for a more stable Egypt.   Continue reading El-Mursi Hegazy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Egyptian Economy →

Egypt

Morsi’s Egypt spirals further into chaos with apparent Dec. 15 constitutional referendum

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It’s hard to believe that 10 days ago, Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi seemed firmly in control of events in the Arab world’s most populous country — he had just been instrumental in achieving a ceasefire between Palestinians in Gaza and Israel, and Egypt’s constituent assembly, despite some difficulties, was plodding its way toward the draft of a new constitution for a newly democratized nation.

Today, of course, Morsi stands at the most controversial point of his young presidency, defending the unilateral decree he announced on November 22 asserting extraordinary (if temporary) presidential powers, and hoping to push through a referendum in just 12 days — on December 15 — over a constitution rushed out by the constituent assembly just last week.

Morsi announced the referendum over the weekend, which means there will be no shortage of tumult in the days and weeks ahead.

I’ve not written much about the latest political crisis in Egypt, the latest act in what seems like an unending drama that began with the Tahrir Square protests in January 2011 that pushed longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak from office, through over a year of military rule by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the 2011 parliamentary elections and their subsequent cancellation, even more parliamentary elections and their (second) disqualification, and a roller-coaster presidential election that ended with Morsi’s narrow victory over former Air Force commander Ahmed Shafiq on June 24.

Morsi, just over five months into his tenure as Egypt’s president, has argued that the decree is necessary to safeguard Egypt’s strides toward democracy, and if he wins his latest gambit, he’ll have pushed Egypt from the post-revolutionary phase into something more enduring, although at the cost of an Egyptian constitution that remains incredibly controversial and at the risk of having enacted it in a manner entirely inconsistent with democratic norms and the rule of law.

Pro-revolutionary forces took to Tahrir Square last week once again in opposition to Morsi, and pro-Islamist forces counter-protested over the weekend in favor of Morsi.  But with now, apparently, less than two weeks to go until the constitutional referendum, it’s worth taking a look at where each of the key players in the unfolding events stand.   Continue reading Morsi’s Egypt spirals further into chaos with apparent Dec. 15 constitutional referendum →

Egypt

Morsi: ‘We’re learning. We’re learning how to be free.’

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Less than a week after Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s extraordinary decree asserting exception presidential powers, he’s given an English language interview to Time magazine.

It’s incredibly fascinating.

Read it all.

Among other things (including a hard-to-follow metaphor about Planet of the Apes — the old one, not the new one), Morsi shows no regret about his decree:

What I can see now is, the Egyptians are free. They are raising their voices when they are opposing the President and when they are opposing what’s going on. And this is very important. It’s their right to express and to raise their voices and express their feelings and attitudes. But it’s my responsibility. I see things more than they do…

But there is some violence. Also, there is some relation shared between these violent acts and some symbols of the previous regime. I think you and I — I have more information, but you can feel that there is something like this in this matter.

I’m sure Egyptians will pass through this. We’re learning. We’re learning how to be free.

I’ve typically been inclined to give Morsi the benefit of the doubt (i.e., during the U.S. embassy protests earlier in September), but last week’s decree was difficult to understand — and today’s rushed vote by the constituent assembly to push through a new constitution is equally troubling.

Morsi has had to balance a difficult set of competing interests, and until last week, I thought he has done a better-than-expected job in managing those competing interests, but I wonder how much longer the current crisis can go on until Egyptian’s still-powerful military begins to assert itself.

Egypt

Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle

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Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi today in Brussels made his most detailed comments yet on the Sept. 11 protests/attacks that took place at the U.S. embassy in Cairo (and the more deadly assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in Libya):

“Muslims and Christians in Egypt are equal citizens and have the same rights… We are cautious about those principles and human values, also respecting visitors and respecting tourists… and respecting and protecting diplomatic delegations and private and public properties, and not attacking them.

“Freedom, and ensuring safety of self, and protecting this freedom and people and preserving property is the responsibility of the Egyptian nation.”

He continued: “The Egyptian nation is capable now of protecting people’s opinions and allowing them breathing room, as well as protecting diplomatic delegations and all foreigners, visitors, tourists, embassies and consulates in Egypt.”

“I see in Egypt and the Arab and Islamic world a severe anger toward the violations made by a very small number of individuals. They have insulted the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. We stand very strongly against this. We don’t agree with or approve this, and we stand against anyone who tries to raise such false slogans and create these disturbances, tension and hatred between populations.”

“Those [people] are not accepted, not by people in Egypt nor other Arab and Islamic countries, nor by their own people. I affirm that the American people reject this and I’ve called on them to declare their rejection of them, at the same time with our rejection of those bad practices that bring harm and not benefit.”

Got all that?  To me, those sound like the words of a president terrified at the thought of losing any side over this week’s crisis — and the sides are too numerous to count.

At home, he certainly can’t be seen as standing weak in defense of Islam, but he also can’t be seen in the United States as condoning violent attacks on the U.S. embassy.

It’s hard to believe that Morsi has been in office for only about 10 weeks — he won (narrowly) Egypt’s presidential runoff on June 24 against former air force commander and Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.

Remember, too, that it’s been just six months since Morsi has appointed his prime minister, Hisham Qandil, and less than a month since Morsi pulled off his more-or-less successful political coup in retiring the military’s chief, Hussein Tantawi, who had served as Egypt’s defense minister since 1991, thereby making Morsi the indisputable head of state.

It’s clear that the U.S. president Barack Obama is none too pleased with Morsi’s reticence in condemning the attacks, especially given the unqualified condemnation offered up across the board by Libya’s political elite yesterday.  The U.S. administration, with Obama up for reelection within 60 days, might be justifiably short on patience with the Middle East these days, given the dual crises in Libya and Egypt following the embassy riots, and an Israeli prime minister who is publicly attacking the Obama administration at every turn over Iran’s nuclear weapons program (and despite Morsi’s visit to Tehran, the first of an Egyptian leader since the 1979 Iranian revolution, there’s no love lost in Cairo for Iran).

Above all, Morsi was set to meet with Obama in Washington in October — if that meeting still happens, you better believe it’s going to be incredibly tense.  U.S. public opinion has now sharply condemned Morsi, and even the Cairo embassy has taken to snarking at the Muslim Brotherhood via Twitter for talking out of both sides of its mouth (one Arabic, the other English).

Morsi cannot lose the United States and the United States naturally wants to give him the benefit of the doubt — despite the Obama administration’s unease with an Islamist president, Morsi was elected democratically, and the U.S. will want to see the positive outcome of the Arab Spring that it so vociferously trumpeted since the early days of the protests in Tahrir Square back in February 2011.  So it’s still in the best interests of the United States to maintain a constructive relationship with Egypt.  But Morsi needs U.S. support even more — not just in luring tourists, but in encouraging the foreign investment necessary to revitalize a stagnated, bloated and state-heavy economy, including a much-needed loan from the International Monetary Foundation. Continue reading Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle →

Egypt

Morsi, in firing defense minister, asserts presidential control over Egypt

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Of course, the significance of the decision by Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi on Sunday to announce the resignation of not just Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi as defense minister, but his deputy, General Sami Anan, cannot be understated.

It is easily the most significant moment in Egyptian governance since Morsi’s election — and it, surprisingly, comes just over a week after Morsi’s first cabinet was sworn in — a cabinet that seemed destined to feature Egypt’s military, with little civilian participation from beyond the Muslim Brotherhood and its sphere of allies.

But it also comes very soon after Morsi fired his intelligence chief in the wake of increased attacks and a growing Islamic fundamentalist threat on the Egypt-Israel border in Sinai.

Tantawi, the leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that led Egypt’s transitional government between the fall of Hosni Mubarak and Morsi’s election, has essentially been the head of Egypt’s military since his appointment as secretary of defense in 1991.  His reappointment as defense secretary in the cabinet of Morsi’s prime minister, Hisham Qandil, was seen as a sign that the Egyptian military had reached somewhat of an uneasy truce with Morsi — Morsi may be the elected president, but the military would have enough residual power to veto Morsi on key issues, especially where national security is involved.

That changed Sunday — and the Tantawi and Anan retirements are not all that Morsi (pictured above, right)accomplished.

Morsi amended the last-minute June 17 declaration by SCAF that has attempted to limit presidential powers; instead, Morsi issued a new Constitutional Declaration that gives the president full executive and legislative authority, as well as power to set Egyptian public policy and sign international treaties.  He also appointed Mahmoud Mekki, a respected deputy head of the Cassation Court, as his vice president (although in doing so, Morsi seemed to break a promise to appoint a woman and a Coptic Christian as his vice presidents).

Morsi appointed as the new defense minister a little-known general, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi (pictured above, far left).  In a profile today, Al Ahram noted that the 57-year-old El-Sisi, who previously served as Egypt’s military attaché to Saudi Arabia, will be the first Egyptian defense minister who also doesn’t hold the title of field marshal.  El-Sisi is best known internationally as the general who announced that the military had conducted virginity tests on female protestors at Tahrir Square in order to prove soldiers had not raped them.  SCAF subsequently backtracked on El-Sisi’s somewhat embarrassing statement.

Much of Egypt’s independent media and figures such as Mohamed ElBaradei have welcomed Morsi’s move.  A wide spectrum, from youth protest leaders to Salafists are applauding what seems to be a bona-fide transfer of power from the military to the civilian president.

Mark Lynch at Foreign Policy dubbed Egypt’s president “Lamborhini Morsi” and offers three alternative (not incompatible) takes: Continue reading Morsi, in firing defense minister, asserts presidential control over Egypt →

Egypt

Egypt’s new government sworn in today, featuring continuity from SCAF transitional government

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The first Egyptian cabinet of newly elected Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi and his new prime minister Hisham Qandil was sworn in today.

That Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi (pictured above, with US defense secretary Leon Panetta) will continue to serve as defense minister in the cabinet of tells you everything you need to know about Egypt’s new cabinet.

Qandil admitted as much in a press conference following the ceremony — the cabinet will feature continuity over rupture.

Tantawi, Egypt’s minister of defense since 1991 and the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that took over Egypt’s government after the resignation of former president Hosni Mubarak, is the personification of the Egyptian military.  Although it was widely expected that he would continue in some role in Morsi’s government, at least initially, it makes clear that Egypt’s military will still wield a considerable amount of power, notwithstanding the transition to a democratically-elected president.

Otherwise, many of the “new” cabinet ministers are holdovers from the prior transitional government of SCAF prime minister Kamal al-Ganzouri, including the finance minister, Momtaz el-Said, and the foreign minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr, both career diplomats.

The remaining positions went mostly to longtime Muslim Brotherhood figures (although not to Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood’s first-choice presidential candidate), including:

  • Mostafa Mosaad, a member of the Brotherhood’s direct political vehicle, the Freedom and Justice Party (حزب الحرية والعدالة‎), was appointed higher education minister.
  • Tarek Wafiq, an engineer and head of the FJP’s housing committee, was appointed housing minister.
  • Salah Abdel Maqsoof, an outspoken Muslim Brotherhood journalist, was appointed minister of information (and will, notably, control access to state television and other key media sources).

The SCAF-heavy cabinet is already being criticized as lacking enough fresh faces, lacking women and lacking any political appointees from outside the Muslim Brotherhood.  Qandil’s appointment last week has been subject to much criticism — he’s been perceived as having insufficient political experience, a lacking economic background and very close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

One of the most promising appointments is the new justice minister, Ahmed Mekky, a prominent and reform-minded judge who is the former vice president of Egypt’s Court of Appeals, and Mohamed Mahsoub, a member of the centrist Al-Wasat party will be the minister of parliamentary affairs.

Despite an initial decision to appoint hard-line Salafist scholar Mohamed Ibrahim as minister of religious endowments, Morsi and Qandil appear to have backed down amid criticism and instead appointed Osama El-Abd, the vice-chancellor of Al-Azhar University, the oldest university in Egypt. Continue reading Egypt’s new government sworn in today, featuring continuity from SCAF transitional government →

Egypt

Morsi announces surprise choice as new Egyptian prime minister

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This is a little strange.

Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi has appointed little-known Hisham Qandil, the current transitional minister of water resources and irrigation, as Egypt’s new prime minister.

This upends several media reports over the past few weeks that Morsi was narrowing his search to more well-known economist types, such as former Central Bank of Egypt president Mahmoud Abul-Eyoun.  The announcement came nearly a month after Morsi was sworn in and after multiple delays.

Since inauguration, Morsi has struggled with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces over everything from the appointment of the Constituent Assembly (which will write Egypt’s new constitution) to the disbanding of Egypt’s Islamist-dominated parliament.  One of the key problems in assessing Qandil’s appointment is that no one knows what Morsi’s powers will be as Egypt’s president (especially vis-a-vis SCAF), let alone what to expect from his prime minister.

We also know what Egypt’s investors think of the appointment: not much. Stock prices in the benchmark EGX 30 fell 1% today.

Qandil, relatively young at age 50, is not a particular specialist in economics and, prior to his appointment as water minister in July 2011, was a senior bureaucrat in the water ministry.  At a press conference later, he announced that he intends to appoint a technocratic cabinet shortly, and that he would focus on Morsi’s five top priorities — his ‘100 day plan’ to focus on security, traffic, bread, public cleanliness and fuel.

The announcement does not tell us with any further clarity what official role, if any, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Khairat al-Shater will play in the new government — al-Shater, a businessman and Islamic activist, was the Brotherhood’s original candidate for president prior to his disqualification earlier this spring, and is believed to wield signficant influence behind the scenes with the new Morsi administration.

I’ll note, however, that “water” is not among those five priorities, but water management and supply is a critical issue for a desert country whose main river, the Nile, is absolutely critical to its economy, transportation, agriculture, health and sustainability.

Like Morsi, he appears to have studied in the United States — he apparently has a doctorate in irrigation from the University of North Carolina in 1993.  He has also served as a senior manager for the African Development Bank.

It’s also strange that the announcement came initially via the Facebook page of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party — Morsi has gone to lengths to sever official ties with the group since his election last month as Egypt’s new president, and he stressed in his press conference that Qandil has belonged to no official political party, but Egypt Independent has already noted one detail that could concern secularists:

The former irrigation minister’s beard has caused speculation of Islamist tendencies. He denied any affiliation with Islamist groups when he told Al Jazeera his beard was grown in keeping with religious obligations.

Photograph by Al-Masry Al-Youm of the Egypt Indpendent.

Egypt

Former Mubarak intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has died

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Omar Suleiman has died at 77, while undergoing medical tests in the United States.

He will not be missed among Egypt’s revolution-minded citizens, and he will be remembered both for the human rights violations that he is alleged to have committed as Egypt’s top intelligence chief for decades.  I think most of all, he’ll be remembered for his visible role as the vice president in the last, hectic days of Hosni Mubarak’s regime.  When the end came for the regime, it was Suleiman’s glassy face we remember, hours before the military brass issued its Communiqué No. 1, bringing the curtain down.

But recall that Suleiman was disqualified — along with several other top candidates — for the presidential race.  In the wake of that decision, former Mubarak prime minister Ahmed Shafiq effectively consolidated the pro-security, pro-military sector of the electorate to place second in the first round of the presidential election on May 23 and 24, and he only narrowly lost the runoff on June 16 and 17.

Had Suleiman not been disqualified, he may well have won the voters that ultimately supported Shafiq and perhaps had a real shot at winning the Egyptian presidency.

It’s hard to imagine how Egypt’s transfer could be any bumpier than it’s been, but it’s worth pausing to note that a Suleiman victory would have been an even greater disaster.  In addition to what would have been a controversial return of the felool — ‘remnants’ — of the old regime to power, Egypt would today be dealing with the fallout of that president’s death in office just three weeks after his inauguration.

Instead, we are awaiting the appointment of Mohammed Morsi’s prime minister, and Egypt’s Administrative Court has passed on the opportunity to disrupt the work of the Constituent Assembly, the group that is drafting Egypt’s new constitution.

Egypt

Forget PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian — Egypt’s new PM is likely to be Mahmoud Abul-Eyoun

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UPDATE, July 24: In a surprise move, Morsi has announced water minister Hisham Qandil as his new prime minister.

* * * *

Newly inaugurated Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi is set to announce his pick for prime minister on Wednesday, which will be perhaps the single most important signal yet from the Morsi administration as to how he will govern.

Western media are speculating that it will be none other than Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.  The idea that El-Erian would leave PIMCO and return to Egypt after an entire adult life spent abroad to take on an undefined role for a Muslim Brotherhood-backed president whose role is equally undefined is, to say the least, farfetched.  Even El-Erian himself appears to have denied the reports.

In contrast, several Egypt-based news sources seem almost certain that the new prime minister will be former Central Bank of Egypt president Mahmoud Abul-Eyoun (shown above), who served as the CBE president from 2001 to 2003 and served as CEO of the Kuwait International Bank until December 2011.

If not Abul-Eyoun, sources have indicated that the prime minister will come from among three additional possibilities, each of whom is an economist: Farouq al-Oqda, the current governor of the Central Bank of Egypt since 2003; Hazem al-Biblawy, a former finance minister; or Osama Saleh, head of the General Authority for Investment.

Those reports make a lot of sense to me:

  • Morsi is not an economist, but the biggest challenge for his administration will be to boost Egypt’s sclerotic economy — international reserves have plummeted by half and borrowing costs have risen 50% since Hosni Mubarak was toppled in Febraury 2011 after three decades in power.  Unemployment is high, especially among the young, and GDP growth is expected to slow from an already tepid 2.5% in 2011 to just 1.5% this year.
  • Morsi has stated  that he wants to appoint a cabinet gradually, so as to ensure the seamless nature of the transition.
  • If he appoints a Muslim Brotherhood member or an Islamist, it will be instantly divisive , drawing mistrust from Coptic Christians, secularists and liberals, to say nothing of SCAF, the military and the so-called ‘deep state’ elements that remain entrenched in the fabric of Egyptian political power.
  • As the former parliamentary leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s political arm, however, Morsi will not want to appoint a prime minister deemed too unacceptable to the Brotherhood.
  • If he appoints someone too close to SCAF or Hosni Mubarak’s old regime, he’ll draw criticism from Islamists and secularists alike.
  • If he appoints someone too famous (like El-Erian or other well-known figures), he could also risk being overshadowed or outmaneuvered — after all, Morsi’s image in Egypt is of a “spare tire” who was only the Brotherhood’s last-minute choice for the presidency.

So among those four options, Abul-Eyoun seems the most likely.  The 75-year-old al-Biblawy served as finance minister recently under the transitional SCAF government, but tried to resign after clases between police and Coptic Christians in October 2011.  Morsi may also prefer to keep al-Oqda and Saleh in their current roles, so as not to disrupt Egypt’s economy any further.

That hasn’t stopped rumors like the El-Erian one, nor has it stopped speculation that Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, might be appointed prime minister, or that the Muslim Brotherhood would prefer Khairat al-Shater, a businessman who was the Muslim Brotherhood’s first choice for the presidential race, until his disqualification in May. Continue reading Forget PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian — Egypt’s new PM is likely to be Mahmoud Abul-Eyoun →

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Morsi declared winner of presidential runoff in Egypt

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So it’s Mohammed Morsi.

Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been elected the first civilian president in the first free and fair elections (presumably) in the modern history of Egypt, which were held last weekend.

I have to say, I was anticipating the fair chance of an announcement of Ahmed Shafiq as the “winner,” notwithstanding the actual vote tally.

Morsi won 51.73% to just 48.27% for Ahmed Shafiq, the former Air Force commander, former Mubarak prime minister and likely favored candidate of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has been a bit schizophrenic of late, to say the least, in its willingness to hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The announcement of Morsi’s victory comes after Morsi himself declared victory last Monday in the wake of unofficial counts showing him with a small, but meaningful, lead.  It’s still unclear why there’s been a delay in the announcement, which was supposed to come on Thursday.

Of course, Morsi has been elected president without anyone in Egypt knowing what that means.  Since no constitution has been drafted, it’s unclear whether Morsi will have any real power or will rather be a figurehead.

In the final hours of voting, however, SCAF announced amendments to the Constitutional Declaration promulgated in March 2011 granting itself the right to assume parliamentary powers, the right to approve the state budget, the right to veto the president’s decisions about declaring war and the right to intrude on the constitution-writing process.  On the previous Thursday, the Supreme Constitutional Court invalidated the January 2012 parliamentary elections, thereby suspending Egypt’s short-lived parliament.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 235 of the 508 parliamentary seats (another 121-seat bloc went to the more conservative, Salafist Al-Nour Party).

So with Morsi’s presidential victory, the Muslim Brotherhood would have been in a very strong position to, you know, actually have real power in Egypt.  Likely, the prospect of a transition to an Islamist government spooked SCAF, which has clumsily tried to rewrite the rules of the transition to give it a role akin to the Turkish military during much of the 20th century — embedded in the fabric of government (which meant that it continued to benefit from corruption and graft) and “guardian” of the secular nature of the Turkish state (which meant that, until the Erdoğan government in 2003, it would stage a coup upon the election of any Islamist government).

Morsi won 13.23 million votes out of the 26.42 million cast to just 12.35 million for Shafiq.  The election commission invalidated over 843,000 votes, less than the total margin of victory for Morsi.

It is now up to Morsi to show that he will be a president for all Egyptians, including the wide swath of pro-revolutionary voters — non-Islamists, secularists, moderates, liberals, nationalists — who supported Morsi as the only option in the face of Shafiq, whose potential election was largely seen as representing a step back to Mubarak-style semi-authoritarianism.

It is also now up to Morsi to work with SCAF to bring some conclusion to the turmoil of recent weeks and bring the transition from Mubarak to democracy (however imperfect) to a more settled conclusion, and to work with SCAF to oversee the re-instating of parliament or new elections for parliament, as well as to oversee the Constituent Assembly that will draft the constitution — before its suspension, the parliament had agreed to a body comprised 50% each of Islamists and non-Islamists.

Khairat al-Shater, the deputy chair of the Muslim Brotherhood, confirmed this week that his group and SCAF were conducting negotiations about the transfer of power.  Al-Shater, a popular former businessmen, who is seen as a pragmatic Islamist, was the Brotherhood’s first candidate for president, but was disqualified in April.

Whatever happens, it appears that SCAF, which is supposed to hand over power in a grand June 30 ceremony, will still play a significant role in Egypt’s Morsi era as well as its post-Mubarak era: Continue reading Morsi declared winner of presidential runoff in Egypt →