Day: July 7, 2013
Inclusion is difficult
That’s clear enough from this morning’s news that the Salafist Nour party appears to have vetoed the already announced naming of liberal/secularist Mohamed ElBaradei as prime minister of Egypt’s interim government. It is also apparent from the New York Times account of President Morsi’s fall, which included multiple efforts by the Americans and the army to convince him to broaden his government and include more of his opposition. It was good advice then, and it is good advice now.
But it is difficult. The basic problem is that Egyptians have not yet agreed on the rules of their political game. Morsi rammed through an Islamist-leaning constitution, approved in a referendum, that the army has now suspended. The Nour party, seeing an opening, has endorsed the coup and will want to take advantage of the interim period to try to ensure that the new constitution the army has promised will lean even more in the Islamist direction than Morsi’s ill-fated version. ElBaradei is unlikely to let that happen, as he is a devoted secularist and constitutionalist, albeit one who was apparently prepared to ride to power on the back of a military coup. Read more
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