Lessons to be learnt from the Morsi debacle

At the beginning of 2012, in the interval between the ousting of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and the election won by Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, I had the opportunity to talk to a senior member of the Egyptian military that was overseeing the transition to a democratically-chosen leader.

During the course of the conversation I asked if the coming election would mark the end of the military's involvement in Egyptian politics.

"The army is sick and tired of having to run Egypt – it's not what we are trained for and we face constant criticism from abroad," was the reply in part.

"The people can choose a president and hopefully we can go back to barracks and get on with our job of ensuring the country's security.

"It would take very extreme circumstances for us to intervene again. "

Eighteen months on and the elected president has been deposed just one quarter of the way into his term and the military are once again pulling the strings. So what were the "extreme circumstances" that brought about this radical change of tactics?

Well, for a start Morsi's government was incompetent. The election was a golden opportunity to revive tourism, which had shrivelled almost to nothing during the disturbances that brought down Mubarak. Nothing was done. No attempt was made to woo back foreign investment, unemployment soared, inflation boomed, Egyptians were spending half a day in queues to refuel their cars, a burgeoning black market was accompanied by a crime wave and electricity outages were becoming more and more common.

Surprisingly some of these problems disappeared almost at the moment Morsi was ousted, especially the power cuts and fuel queues. One Egyptian academic put it down to the lack of ability among Brotherhood Ministers and senior officials.

"They simply had no idea about running a country – most of them had come out of jail – the expertise wasn't there," he said.

"The Egyptian military has that experience. It is simply better at it."

But ineptness in a government isn't usually a case for mounting a coup. In democracies they serve their term and are then thrown out at the next election.

What sent the crowds into the streets demanding instant action was not simply that they could see the downward economic spiral under Morsi – although that played a part – rather the feeling that the Muslim Brotherhood was reverting to type and taking the country step by step towards a fundamentalist Islamic state – anathema to many Egyptians especially the 60 per cent of the population who are under 25.

As the protests became larger and more violent and clashes with the hard core Brotherhood supporters who still constitute a substantial minority increased, the army really had no choice but to act. These were the "extreme circumstances" that my general talked about and indeed impinged on what he saw as the army's fundamental role of maintaining the security of the nation.

So what happens next? I believe the Egyptian military is sincere in wanting to get out of government. The generals dislike having to listen to lectures from the US, as they were getting from Deputy Secretary of State William Burns a few days go [ED July 15], the more galling because they depend on the $1.5 billion in aid they receive from Washington every year.

So the Egyptians will, in the not too distant future, have another go at electing people competent enough to run the country. There are many quite capable of doing so and if some of them carry taints of the Mubarak regime, so be it. Possibly some senior Egyptian military officers might consider shedding their uniforms and becoming civilian politicians as has happened in Burma. All this may not appeal to the proponents of pure Westminster-style democracy, but the West has to live with the brutal fact that word is now interpreted differently in many parts of the world.

There are lessons to be learnt by all sides from the events of the past few weeks. The military would be foolish to try and supress the Muslim Brotherhood by force, as seems to be happening in a series of violent crackdowns, including the arrest of its leaders, restrictions on its supportive media and the use of armed force against civilians.

Currently on the defensive and demoralised, the Brotherhood can still count on the support of around 30 per cent of the electorate. It has to be encouraged back into the political process – if not it will likely go underground, violence will escalate and the country will become ungovernable by anything other than a vicious Mubarak-style dictatorship.

The Muslim Brotherhood itself will have to consider its position. If it ever wants to return to power it must abandon its more radical ambitions of an Islamic state on the Nile. Egypt has gone too far down the secular road for that. When Morsi was elected Egyptians indicated they could accept a competent conservative administration – instead they got incompetent fundamentalism.

Finally, the vast turnouts in the streets that convinced the army to take charge need to understand that opposition for its own sake is futile. There is, as yet, no vision, no strategy to take the country forward. The so-called National Salvation Front is nothing more than a grab-bag of opportunist secular, liberal and revolutionary groups that have yet to coalesce into a coherent political movement.

Egypt certainly needs a civilian government, but it also needs a strong government capable of meeting the challenges of restoring the country's credentials among the international community. If it can find the people to do that, then this ancient land can still flourish in the 21^st century.