Ayoon Wa Azan (The army and the crisis in Egypt)

For the first time in my life, and I have been in this business since I was 19 years old, I call for military intervention against a civilian administration. I write on Wednesday morning, the deadline when Al-Hayat’s last page goes to print, and I do not know what will happen with the Egyptian army’s ultimatum in the afternoon. But I call on the army to take over power in Egypt for a maximum of one year, in which the constitution would be amended and new presidential and legislative elections are held. I am not advocating a military coup, and I certainly do not want Egypt to go through another 60 years of rule by colonels and generals, but I call for a transitional phase of a maximum of one year because the current situation in Egypt, the country of all Arabs, must end. President Mohamed Morsi said that he is the first civilian and legitimately elected president in Egypt, but it seems that he refuses to see how the majority of the people of Egypt have pulled the rug of legitimacy from under his feet. In one year, Morsi succeeded in losing the confidence of the majority, having committed mistake after mistake and moved from failure to failure. As I write this, I stress that I have no position against the Muslim Brotherhood, who are part of the Egyptian people, but I hold President Mohamed Morsi accountable to what he promised to do but did not deliver on. I say that Khairat al-Shater would have definitely shown broader and deeper knowledge of government, but his judicial record disqualified him from the election. I would have preferred it if the Muslim Brotherhood chose Essam el-Erian as candidate for president instead of Morsi, as he has practical political experience. But the Islamist group, as usual, placed allegiance above competence, and now, the entire country is paying the price. The president addressed the Egyptians on Tuesday night and insisted that there was no “substitute to constitutional, legal, and electoral legitimacy.” This is true, but it does not apply to a president who promised specific things that he failed to implement. Things only became worse under his rule, to the extent that we saw a recovering Hosni Mubarak smirking sarcastically, mocking the president who succeeded him. In his speech, President Morsi presented an initiative that included replacing the government with a coalition cabinet representing various parties in the country, forming a balanced national committee to draft the constitution, and implementing several measures to guarantee the coming elections would be free, fair, and transparent. If President Morsi had proposed this six months or even three months ago, it may have been accepted. But he was too late, and he refused to acknowledge the fact that Egyptian public opinion had turned against him. Furthermore, he only came up with his initiative after opposition forces rejected dialogue with him. I noticed again and again in Morsi’s speech his reference to ‘legitimacy,’ without him paying attention to the fact that legitimacy is also based on achieving something, which he failed to do. Indeed, what I saw with the Egyptians was that the president would barely make a decision before the courts would declare it to be invalid, from the elections for both houses of parliament, to the appointment of the attorney general, the constitution, and every other major decision he made. Once again, I say that religious parties, whether in Egypt or in Turkey, place allegiance ahead of competence. For this reason, we saw the Brotherhood appointing its members to all ministries and departments in the state, and for this reason, the Brotherhood failed in government and failed to achieve the demands of the people – which are ‘legitimate’ by any measure and do not go much beyond their livelihood, healthcare, social welfare, and education benefits. Today, the Egyptian armed forces are facing a big test. The army has not fought a single conflict in 40 years, but its annual budget is the biggest item in the state budget. Therefore, it is the duty of the army to prove that the investment of the people in their army was a wise investment that pays off during crises. The Egyptians cannot continue to protest with this party or against that party day and night. For even if they all worked together, Egypt would still remain in a tough bend because of the size of its population, and protesting is in the end a form of unemployment. I call for the armed forced to intervene for a limited time only, and I do not want a coup. I also hope that this would be the first and the last call of its kind that I make in my career. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.