Skip to main content

Egypt headed for years of unrest

No wonder the Israelis and Americans loved former Egyptian president Mubarak so much.    He was compliant - and a crook personified! - and kept the "natives" quiet.  So what if the country was corrupt, and poor, even if the USA poured billions into it by way of aid.  Things have changed post the Arab Spring, and not for the better on one level.    Juan Cole, writing on truthdig, predicts years of unrest in the country of pyramids, Luxor and the Nile. 

"On Tuesday, a hot air balloon flying over the ancient city of Luxor, Egypt, exploded and plunged 19 foreign passengers to their deaths, an event that will further harm the country’s limping tourist industry. The tragic balloon fail is an apt metaphor for the political process in Egypt, which has been marked by highhanded and arbitrary decisions on the part of elected government officials. President Mohamed Morsi met Tuesday with those few members of the opposition who would sit down with him, an attempt to mollify the guests with respect to the country’s new law governing elections, which, they maintain, disadvantages them. The rest of the opposition says it is withdrawing from parliamentary elections scheduled for April.

Morsi’s decree in November temporarily putting himself above the law, his decision to push through a controversial constitution that lacks consensus support, and his new elections ordinance, have provoked huge demonstrations, strikes and boycotts. This turmoil, in turn, has hurt Egypt’s key tourism industry, reducing proceeds from $12.5 billion a year before the 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak to $10.5 billion a year after. The announcement by the nation’s leftists and secularists that they will not contest this spring’s elections for the lower house of parliament is a disaster that could plunge Egypt into years of unrest.

Morsi is from the Freedom and Justice Party, the civil wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has announced parliamentary elections in four rounds beginning in mid-April. The National Salvation Front, a coalition of leftist and liberal parties, has objected that the elections law issued by Egypt’s upper house of parliament gerrymandered the nation’s electoral districts so as to benefit the Muslim Brotherhood. The upper house of parliament has many Brotherhood representatives, and about half its number were appointed by Morsi late last fall.

Gerrymandering and other attempts to influence the outcome of elections are a fact of life in democracies, and do not always succeed. Barack Obama was able to prevail in Florida and Pennsylvania in the 2012 election despite Republican Party ploys such as voter identity laws and reduced poll hours. The National Salvation Front’s conviction that it can deny legitimacy to the government by boycotting the balloting is misplaced. Its leaders, including leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, may believe that they can, by refusing to cooperate, wring concessions from Morsi before the vote. But to go into these elections without a campaign organization is suicide for the left and other secularists.

Egypt has lurched from crisis to crisis in the wake of the Feb. 14, 2011, overthrow of the Mubarak regime. Although the uncompromising and domineering political style of the religious right in Egypt, embodied in the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, bears a good deal of the blame for the country’s deadlock, the faintheartedness of Egypt’s left in the face of the upcoming parliamentary elections is also at fault."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as

Climate change: Well-organised hoax?

There are still some - all too sadly people with a voice who are listened to - who assert that climate change is a hoax. Try telling that to the people of Colorado who recently experienced horrendous bushfires, or the people of Croatia suffering with endless days of temps of 40 degrees (and not much less than 30 at night time) some 8-10 degrees above the norm. Bill McKibben, take up the issue of whether climate change is a hoax, on The Daily Beast : Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the staged moon landing. But others have been catching on. Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed out that the idea that carbon dioxide is “harmful to the environment is almost comical.” The always cautious Mitt Romney scoffed at any damage too: “Scientists will fig