A Revolution Undone by Hellyer H. A.;

Author:Hellyer, H. A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2016-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

XI

At the time, I was rather frustrated by some of the coverage that festered within the international media on the goings-on in Egypt. In a flurry of exasperation, I penned a piece for the noted ‘Arabist’ blog. It perhaps still makes for pertinent reading—not simply as a narrative about that particular period, but also because it shows the way in which a particular type of journalism approached Egypt during that time.

There are times that myths circulate so fast, it is hard to keep track of them. In the midst of an extraordinary amount of coverage on Egypt, I was asked for my evaluation of a particular piece, recently published in what I considered to be a respectable media outlet. As I wrote my assessment, I realised that I’d seen those same problems—the same narrative—time and time again in different places. Rather than keep my assessment private, I thought I would turn it into a plea to my colleagues and friends in the media and the think-tank/policy arena.

The plea reads: please knock it off when it comes to your Egypt coverage, and check your sources and facts before you publish in the interests of being ‘balanced’. Believe me: in the long run, you’ll be grateful you did. …

There seems to be a doubt that these protests were about President Mursi’s decree on 22 November, as though they would have happened anyway. That’s an intriguing suggestion, considering that from the 30 June 2012 to 22 November 2012, there were virtually no protests against Mr Mursi. So, for five months, despite calls for protests from pro-Shafiq elements in August, one could not really find much in the way of street action in Egypt. Odd, that.

No matter. Mr Mursi is the ‘elected president of Egypt’ and as such should be able to expect two things: a) that he can give himself supra-legal powers, as stipulated in the decree and b) that we constantly remind ourselves and the world that he is the ‘elected president of Egypt’. Well, of course, he is the elected president of Egypt—he won the elections in June 2012, in a race where I supported his victory, and I have no regrets over that decision today.

Nevertheless, more than 48 per cent of the votes went to his opponent—and many who did vote for Mr Mursi, did so to keep his opponent out. That’s not generally referred to as a strong democratic mandate: it’s probably better described as a weak democratic band-aid. Mr Mursi should not have used that slim electoral victory as a sign that he could work outside of the system, as the military council had. My criticisms of that council’s handling of the transition are a matter of public record: but they did have popular support for their institution, as well as their road-map. Mr Mursi did not, and would have been well-advised to have built that support by encouraging consensus, at a critical time for Egypt’s transition, if he wanted to go outside the normal political and legal channels of Egypt’s institutions.

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