Illiberal Egypt

My Twitterfeed is full of people bemoaning Egyptian President Morsi’s crackdown on protests against his ramrodding of the new constitution first through the constituent assembly and now through the December 15 referendum.  My sympathies are with them on process, which was rushed and excluded important parts of Egyptian society, and substance, because the constitution is both excessively Islamist and excessively protective of military prerogatives.  While Morsi’s Justice Minister has indicated the President might delay the referendum if the opposition engages in a dialogue, he shows no signs of backing off either the draft constitution or the decree in which he gave himself dictatorial powers.  There are also reports that Morsi is preparing a decree to impose martial law.

Morsi is a democratically elected president with strong and organized support from the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest political force in the country, and equivocal support from the more conservative Salafists, who did well in parliamentary elections.  He is likely to prevail.  My friends in the street protests, who have rejected the call for dialogue, are likely to lose, not because they are wrong but because they are poorly organized, undisciplined and unappealing to many Egyptians.  My guess is that some of them will boycott the referendum, hoping that will invalidate it.  Others will vote “no,” ensuring that turn-out is not so low as to cause reasonable people to question its validity.

The street protests themselves are a problem.  Many Egyptians are tired of them.  They want to get back to making a living.  Cairo–and other Egyptian cities–are chaotic even without street demonstrations.  With them, life quickly becomes a struggle.

The lack of nonviolent discipline is a big problem.  Street demonstrators almost everywhere have to be extraordinarily disciplined to avoid being blamed for violence.  Egyptian demonstrators throw rocks and bang with sticks on cars.  These are minor malfeasances, but enough to give Morsi what he needs to accuse them of violence, which he naturally claims was unprovoked.

Don’t get me wrong here:  I have no doubt which side is more likely to initiate violence and to use it with abandon.  The police and their thuggish friends in the Muslim Brotherhood really don’t have any other method of dealing with crowds.  The protesters need to make sure that responsibility lies clearly and unequivocally where it belongs. They have not done so.

We are headed for an illiberal Egypt, one that holds elections, convenes a parliament, passes laws and even tolerates a wide range of discussion.  But it will also limit effective political opposition, disrupt it when it occurs, and use the police and courts as instruments of repression.  Islam will play a much stronger political role than in the past, even if lots of Egyptians remain uncovered and unwilling to attend mosque regularly.  Women and minorities will have to fight uphill for their rights, not that that is anything new.  The military’s prerogatives will remain protected, at least until they become a serious constraint on the economy.  Hamas and other Muslim Brotherhood organizations will find comfort, if not sustenance, in Cairo.

On foreign policy, I doubt Morsi’s Egypt will renounce the peace treaty with Israel, but it will be more exacting in its interpretation of it and expect continuation of the loosened restrictions on its army’s presence in the Sinai.  Those who want Egypt to reemerge as a leader in the Arab world will likely have to wait a while.  An occasional initiative from Cairo will not change the facts of life:  Egypt is too weak economically and militarily to do much heavy lifting on, for example, the Syria civil war or the Iranian nuclear program.  Morsi will cozy up to Washington when it suits him, rightly expecting (as Mubarak did) that the Americans will soften their criticism of his illiberalism in exchange for cooperation on terrorism and Israel.

Were I Egyptian, I would be disappointed in an illiberal outcome.  Much better than that seemed possible when Mubarak fell almost two years ago.  The important thing is to make it just the first stage in a longer-term transition towards a more worthy democratic outcome.  Only more disciplined, united and organized liberal forces can make that happen.

PS:  This is a good presentation of the anti-Morsi perspective.