Brotherhood could be outlawed

The violent eruptions aim to demonstrate that the Brotherhood is still a potent force on the political scene.

Founded 85 years ago, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood should be adept at wheeling and dealing on the political plane.  Its members have served time both in prison and Parliament.  Its nominees won just under 50 per cent of seats in people's assembly in 2011 and its candidate, Muhammad Morsi, was Egypt’s first freely elected president. When in office, however, the Brotherhood and Morsi over-reached and grabbed power.  Egypt plunged into political chaos and economic free fall. Protests since June 30 against their rule, prompted the military to effect their removal on July 3. 

Since then the old men of the Brotherhood’s old guard have made one mistake after another, leading to the rapid political marginalisation of Egypt's second oldest and best organised socio-political movement. The Brotherhood’s response to ouster was to demand Morsi's reinstatement although this was never a possibility. The Brotherhood’s justification for its unwavering demand is that he is the legitimate ruler of Egypt.  He won the presidential election and should serve out his four-year term. In the final round of the presidential poll Morsi won 51.7 per cent of the vote as compared to 48.3 per cent garnered by his opponent.  However, during the first round, Morsi took just under six million votes, regarded by some analysts as the core electoral strength of the Brotherhood. In the Decisive round, Morsi garnered 13 million votes.

Open negotiations

Consequently, he and the Brotherhood should have realised that they could not ‘rule’ without taking into account the concerns and interests of six million non-Brotherhood voters as well as those who voted for his rival. This was the Brotherhood's first monumental mistake. Morsi and the Brotherhood still have not made the calculation and continue to argue that winning elections conferred on them the right to rule alone. Until the last moment, the military high command was pleading with Morsi to open negotiations with his opponents and agree to a referendum on his presidency. He relented only after he had been deposed.  By then it was too late.

To pressure the military for reinstatement, the Brotherhood has mounted mass sit-ins outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Nasr City, east of central Cairo, and at al-Nahda Square in front of Cairo University. These events, attended by tens of thousands have been going on for three weeks.  The sit-ins are not, however, spontaneous, like opposition rallies that attract millions, but well orchestrated and liberally financed.  
      
During visits to both sit-in sites, the Deccan Herald learned that many participants have been brought into Cairo by bus and train from distant cities and towns and the countryside where the Brotherhood has schools, clinics and welfare programmes for the poor. Participants are paid a small daily fee and given food. In some cases, identity cards are held by Brotherhood organisers who do not permit demonstrators to go home until they are replaced by others.

Most of the participants are peaceful people. There are, however, also hotheads, armed enforcers and militia men among them who have, on several planned occasions, marched out of the cordoned off encampments to stage raids on the presidential guards club, where it was suspected Morsi was being held, key bridges across the Nile, state television, and, lately, Ramsis Square, a central market place and location of Cairo's main railway station.

The sit-ins and the violent eruptions aim to demonstrate that the Brotherhood is still a potent force on the political scene and that the movement can be disruptive it it chooses to go over to the offensive.

The hard political line taken by the Brotherhood, its failure to compromise and reconcile with the secular opposition, the sit-ins, and the violent raids have alienated the vast majority of Egyptians who want an end to unrest, security, and rapid economic recovery.
Thus, the Brotherhood is sidelining itself and ensuring that it will not have a place in the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy.

Although offered posts in the caretaker cabinet, the Brotherhood and not only dismissed the proposed ministries but also the entire transitional process involving constitutional amendments and parliamentary and presidential elections.  The Brotherhood's hard line suits Egypt's young revolutionaries, leftists, nationalists and secularists who do not want to make compromises with fundamentalists.

The anti-Brotherhood alliance is determined, in particular, to remove references to Egypt as an "Islamic state" governed by principles of Sharia, Muslim canon law, and Islam as the state religion.  The more trouble the Brotherhood makes for the caretaker government, the more likely will it be that the movement will be totally excluded from the new order and, if violence continues, outlawed.