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If you haven’t been watching the news for the past two or so years then you are way behind on the times. I’ll try and give you a quick summarised run through of what has been going on in the time you’ve been watching ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’.
It will be three years in January when the Egyptian people took to the streets to demand the resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak. (Why?) He had been in power for 30 years, he was not democratically elected by the people and his cronies were sucking the country dry of resources (billions of dollars), the poor were getting poorer, no jobs for graduates, inflation, no benefits (financial/medical) and we were under military rule. (Are just some of the many reasons why people were frustrated and fed up)
After 18 days of clashes, resistance and protesting, former President Mubarak steps down. GREAT! (or so most of the people thought) Once he left office lots of the people who were activists and fighting for the cause of the revolution dusted themselves off and went back to their everyday lives, which was a HUGE mistake. They didn’t have a plan to put in place once the president had stepped down. Which is when the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic parties who had been oppressed/banned by our previous rulers (Mubarak, Sadat, Nasser), seized the opportunity they had been waiting decades for. They have had planned their ‘coming out party’ for years and they swept the elections and seats in parliament like a tsunami! They were prepared while liberal parties and activists were not. They were blind sided, had the rug pulled out from underneath them and the wool over pulled everyone’s eyes if truth be told. WE WERE NOT READY and we can’t blame them for being ready.
About a year after Mubarak stepped down we had an interesting look at presidential elections. EVERYONE wanted to be president. If you could get 30, 000 signatures and were 100% Egyptian on both sides (mother/father family) then you could run. Over 3,000 people ran for presidency!! It was eventually filtered down to a handful of twenty or so, which split the votes every which way. A second round of elections came about between Mohamed Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood) and Ahmed Sahfik (former minister of Aviation), which to choose? Vote for someone who represents extreme conservative Muslims, or someone part of the regime that had just been toppled and many people had lost their lives for? Who would your vote go to? Many people didn’t go and vote, they boycotted the election because they believed that there was foul play. Morsi won by a VERY small margin (51% to 49% I believe).
Congrats! Egypt has its first democratically elected president… who on June 30th 2012 takes office and is sworn in. Morsi vowed to represent ALL the people in Egypt.
For the first five months of his time in office he took no action or decision on any important issues in the country. (I guess he was learning the ropes or getting comfortable in the chair that everyone seems to want) He did however pardon some of those who had been imprisoned for petty crimes like having a hand in the assassination a former Egyptian president.
Then in November, he comes out and declares that he is above the law and that no judicial court or person can contest to his decisions from that point on wards. In other words he declared himself SUPREME PHAROAH & DICTATOR of Egypt.
(SAY WHAT NOW? The Egyptian people didn’t have a revolution and people didn’t die for him to become another dictator, back to the streets we go!)
A peaceful sit in takes place and Pro Morsi supporters armed and angry attack the sit in, killing some of the protestors. If the president or leader of your country did that, would you sit and take it and just break open another can of pop and bag of potato chips or would you voice your disapproval?
(WAIT ! There’s more…)
A few weeks later protestors take to the streets again this time to prevent the justices from meeting so to prevent any judicial review of the president’s decisions. Instead, President Morsi dissolves the (our equivalent to) the Supreme Court and labels all those who are members “traitors to Egypt”
(It Gets Better!)
A month later, he makes the ‘new’ constitution null and void and forms a constitutional committee to draft a new constitution in just FOUR days; those chosen to be on the committee were extreme Muslim conservatives and preachers. In a referendum not supervised by any judicial branch because judges all over the country boycotted it and the ‘new’ (biased, one sided) constitution narrowly won.
(Meanwhile)
The Egyptian economy was plummeting, foreign investors pulled out and our main source of income, tourism was not revived because the tourists were warned to stay away, plus the president and the minister of tourism never did anything to beef up security to make tourists feel safe, so it died!
In the warmer months of his term in office, in a country as hot as Egypt electricity/power cuts were a daily occurrence. Some people were lucky to have it cut once a day, while others would be without power for hours on end.
Egypt a country rich in fuel witnessed never seen before lines at petrol/gas stations that went on for blocks and were 8 hours long in some cities. Eventually petrol/gas stations had NO gas to sell?!
Egypt that has direct access to the river Nile, suddenly was having sever water shortages! Schools, Businesses and homes would have water shortages some for a few hours others for days on end.
Unemployment has almost doubled, and the value of the Egyptian pound was almost worth nothing. The exchange rate on the black market for the dollar reached 8 Egyptian pounds!
(Still not convinced…need more proof?)
President Morsi outlines his plan to lease the Suez Canal for 50 years giving full administrative control!
Then we had the endless accounts of sexual harassment of women (veiled and non veiled) who would be targeted by groups and assaulted along with the attacks on Christians in and around the country. Not one member of government or the President ever came out and condemned or demanded it to stop. Due to these actions and many of the above decisions hundreds of people have sought Political Asylum in other countries across the globe, some desperate enough to cross the borders into Israel to build a better life for themselves there. If that isn’t fear or desperation I don’t know what is?!
The above is just some of the crap that the Egyptian people have had to endure over the past year under President Morsi’s governing. Months before the 30th of June, a group called El Tamarod (Rebellion) started collecting signatures to demand the resignation of the President, because they honestly did not feel that he represented them and did not have the countries best interests on his agenda. For them to be taken seriously they needed to collect 15 million legitimate signatures, they collected over 22 million. One June 30th, 2013 on the anniversary of the Presidents one year in office, over 30 million Egyptians took to the streets to demand his resignation. They stayed there for four days!
Hearing the cries of 30 million people, the army gave President Moris an ultimatum, (this came after months of trying to negotiate with him), he had 48 hours to come out with a clear all party inclusive road map for the country or they would remove him from office. Just before the deadline Morsi came out and said that he would agree to hold early Parliamentary elections.
(uh, too little, too late dude!)
As promised the military removed him from office and placed him under house arrest.
(Coup or not a Coup?!)
Weikipedia’s definition: “A coup d’état typically uses the extant government’s power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak states that “[a] coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder.” The armed forces, whether military or paramilitary, are not a defining factor of a coup d’état. Lately a view that all coups are a danger to democracy and stability has been challenged by the indication of the phenomenon of a “democratic coup d’état”, which “respond to a popular uprising against an authoritarian or totalitarian regime and topple that regime for the limited purpose of holding the free and fair elections of civilian leaders.”[5]”
We had no extant government takeover of the country; outside parties are temporarily in place until elections are held in 6 months time. The actions that were taken were to save democracy because the Egyptian people were NOT being represented.
Foreign Media and foreign governments all began clucking like chickens and called it a Military Coup; The Egyptians call it the People’s Coup! As you can imagine the Pro-Morsi supporters and members of the Muslim Brotherhood did not take to the news very well, so they took to the streets hurting and killing people who were Anti-Morsi supporter and Christians. General Sisi, in a speech came out and asked the Egyptian people to show their support by going out into the streets if they agreed to him protecting Egypt and her people from the terrorists who have been trying to divide Egypt and cause anarchy. The people answered and 30+ million people gave him their consent.
That brings us to the Pro-Morsi supporters and their 6 week sit-in in El Nahda and Rabaa Adaweya in Nasr City Cairo. The residents and business owners in the area were being obstructed from going about their daily lives, the area became inaccessible. Those who were part of the sit in and had torn up the tiles on the sidewalks to build walls/barricades across the streets preventing vehicles from entering the area. They had set up tents and make shift day-care centers too. Many attempts to negotiate with the protestors/squatters failed because they would not agree to anything, their one demand was that Morsi be reinstated.
(If UK’s Prime Minister or NY’s Mayor had a 6week sit in Trafalgar or Time Square, would they leave it or clear it? If you chose clear it, how would you go about it? (let me jog your memory, think back to occupy Wall Street))
After several attempts of negotiating, meetings of what to do, advice on how to clear the squares and warning of not to do it, the Interior Ministry (who are by no means saints themselves and are responsible for many deaths during the 2011 uprising), felt they had no choice but to go in and clear the squares. Early Wednesday morning, when the crowds would be sparse, they went in with police forces, bulldozers and tear gas. They were met with resistance.
What the foreign media is showing the world is tunnel vision reporting! They are failing to show the WHOLE picture. Many (NOT ALL) of the supports were (and still are), heavily armed with machine guns and rifles, who shot at the armed forces.
When word spread of the clearing of the sit-ins, this angered lots of the Pro-Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood supporters who took to the streets with anger in their eyes and fury in their hearts. Some of these protestors were peaceful in their protest, while others vandalized, burned public property and churches (and I mean OLD churches, like 4th and 5th century), they also stormed several police stations, killing and mutilating the bodies of police officers. (Peaceful and misunderstood protestors right?) This has not been reported on any of the International News Stations and when someone being interviewed would bring it up or mention it; they would make no comment or act as if they hadn’t heard it.
Now that you have a clearer idea of what is going on in Egypt, would you have let your President/Prime Minister drag your country into the ground, or would you have done what the Americans did, when Nixon was in office?
If Egypt and the US’s had facebook accounts, their relationship status would read “it’s complicated”, they are on the verge of a devastating break up. Which would make Russia and China really happy, because they would gladly swoop in and come to Egypt’s aid.
(That would be a WORLD game changer!)
If you require more evidence photos or videos get on twitter or youtube and you can see it yourself. You be the judge, don’t let your media censor the information, speak or think for you.
Here is a link to an article written in an American perspective;
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/putting-egypt-in-context-what-if-president-obama-did-what-morsi
The Irish Alexandrian Speaks Up And Out from Egypt 