On Thursday, Egypt’s official news agency reported that a judicial commission ordered the assets of four people frozen as they were being investigated for illegally receiving funds from abroad. On Friday, US secretary of State John F. Kerry urged Egyptian government not to intimidate the human rights activists. In response to Kerry’s comments on the deterioration of Egypt’s human rights situation, Egypt’s foreign minister rejected “tutelage” over human rights from other countries. When Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had overthrown Mohammad Morsi’s government, Obama administration was not supportive of that putsch and remained lukewarm to military backed government in Egypt, which Arab countries did not like. They were concerned over movements for democracy Arica and other countries. However, western powers were by and large accommodative to military power dispensation in Egypt.
Egypt’s unending travails had started with General Najeeb and Colonel Jamal Abdul Nasir overthrowing the monarchy in 1952 in a coup, as the US and the West had lost an ally. The West was also unhappy with the policies of Jamal Abdul Nasir seeking control of Suez Canal and joining the non-aligned movement. Since then Egypt continues to face vicious circle – from praetorian rule to dictatorship to democracy to praetorian rule. Mohamed Morsi was an elected president. After ousting his government, the authorities which took over the reins of the country had launched a campaign of arrests of opponents of the coup, especially leaders and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The ruling by Egyptian judge, Saeed Youssef El Gazar had sentenced 683 people to death, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Badie. Earlier, according to March 24th verdict, 529 people were sentenced to death in a blanket decision.
However, death sentence of many was commuted to life imprisonment. The prosecutions were brought over the killings of policemen in the southern province of Minya on August 14, 2013. In December 2013, Egypt’s military junta had declared Muslim Brotherhood as the terrorist organisation on account of deadly bomb attack on the police establishment in the country’s Mansoura city. But the responsibility of that bombing had been claimed by an Al Qaeda-aligned outfit known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which indeed was hostilely-disposed towards the Brotherhood for renouncing violence and joining the political mainstream. In September 2013, an Egyptian court had banned the Muslim Brotherhood, and the ban was extended to the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing. The junta had charged the ousted president Mohamed Morsi as a “terrorist” for meeting with Hamas leaders during his term in office.
In the 1970s, the President Sadat had allowed the Brotherhood and Islamists to regroup in an effort to use them against Nasserists and socialists. In 2005, the Brotherhood was a banned organization and fielded its candidates as independents and managed to get around 20% of the seats. One could see that the Brotherhood changed stripes coming out of clandestine activities and treading the democratic path. It could mobilize the people to get rid of Hosnie Mubarak’s dictatorship. After the January 2011 revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to form a political party, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). In June 2012 elections were held under Supreme Council of Armed forces, which was formed after the ouster of Hosnie Mubarak. FJP managed to get 46% of the parliament’s seats and their presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi bagged 25% of the votes in the first round of presidential election and 52% in the run-off. It has to be mentioned that international observers had watched 2012 elections, and they said that elections were free and fair.
Having said that, the first sign of trouble for Morsi had come when he had attempted to incorporate a clause into a draft constitution to grant him sweeping and unrestricted powers, but later retracted in the face of protests. Morsi’s government neglected the economy, which was in shambles, and unemployed youth along with other sections of society came out in droves to protest against the government. Events leading to the ouster of Mohammed Morsi as the president of Egypt reinforced the widely-held belief that for a democratic government to be meaningful, it should deliver and always be sensitive to the interests and aspirations of the people. But opponents of Morsi must be ruing the fact that Abdel Fattah al-sisi has proved to be a worse dictator than Hosnie Mubarak, not to speak of Mohammad Morsi.
Morsi was catapulted into power following a popular uprising by the people, and joined by disgruntled and disaffected citizens to throw hosni Mubarak out of office. Similarly, just as the military rode on the back of 18 days of popular protests to topple Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old government to pave the way for the emergence of Morsi, so once again the Egyptian Army had lent a helping hand to millions of protesting crowds to get rid of their president who came to power on the basis of religious fervor of his supporters.
