Lessons to be learnt from the Morsi debacle

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.