Last updated: 13 Nov 12 @ 03:22  |  

Mohamed Mursi (centre) celebrates after winning the presidential election (Getty images)

In the aftermath of the Egyptian presidential election, John Chisholm assesses where president Mohamed Mursi is likely to steer the country and analyses the myriad internal challenges faced by the fledgling democracy

Egypt finally has an elected president: Mohamed Mursi. Whatever else he may do, Mursi has already entered the history books as the country’s first democratically chosen head of state – by a small margin. For Egypt and its people, getting rid of the Mubarak regime and holding an election was the easy bit. Now the real work begins.

Mohammed Mursi comes from a moderate Islamist segment of the Islamic Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is a very old organisation, predating the Second World War, and has played the role of convenient bogeyman for successive Egyptian leaders. Used to justify repression, totalitarian rule and harsh laws and punishments, if the Islamic Brotherhood had not existed previous regimes would have had to invent them. Raising the spectre of Islamic rule, the justification: “If you do not tolerate us, the Islamic Brotherhood will come and get you” resonated with many groups in Egyptian society such as the Coptic Christians, the business community and Westernised city dwellers.

Well, now the Islamic Brotherhood has come to get them, in the shape of Mr Mursi. The new president has been making conciliatory gestures in every direction since his victory was announced: to the Copts, to women, to Israel. The list will grow as there are many audiences that Mursi has to play to, including his own supporters. Mursi has to bear in mind that he was not the first choice of the Islamic Brotherhood to begin with; that was Kharait Saad El Shater, who was disqualified from standing by the Electoral Commission.

The Islamic Brotherhood itself, being a very broad movement, encompasses moderate Islamists like Mursi all the way through the spectrum to people who would not look out of place in al-Qaeda. This was clearly reflected in his address to his supporters in Tahrir Square on 29 June, where he promised to release Omer Abdel Rahman, imprisoned for his part in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. An undoubted crowd pleaser, it also set some alarm bells ringing, especially in Washington and Jerusalem. To add to this he also undertook to conduct foreign affairs “with dignity” – a direct response to accusations levelled at the Mubarak regime that it was the catspaw of Washington and was far too friendly to Israel. He also undertook to be a “president for all Egyptians” – an effort to assuage his electoral opponents and minority groups like the Copts, and something the more radical wing of the Islamic Brotherhood cannot have wholly welcomed.

But Mursi is right to make such statements. The new president and his faction within the Islamic Brotherhood have consistently pointed to Turkey as the model which they want Egypt to follow; an aim that should have no one massively concerned except those living on the fringes of the political process. Mursi also has to remember that he only just won more than 51 per cent of the popular vote in the second round, and that the voting figures had declined significantly as compared to the first round as people stayed at home rather than vote for either of the two final candidates. Mursi’s claim that he wants to be president for all Egyptians cannot alter the fact that the majority of Egyptians simply did not vote for him. There is not a mandate for introducing Sharia Law, enforcing the Burkha or anything else that would cause ripples of concern in the wider world. In truth, Mursi has no choice but to govern as a moderate (in Egyptian terms) because he has no mandate to do anything else.

This has not stopped many of the younger people who flooded Tahrir Square and risked their lives and careers to bring down Mubarak feeling short changed. Many of these people were secular – or at most moderates – who view the Islamic Brotherhood with suspicion. Although Mr Mursi is a generally inoffensive individual, they see him as the thin end of the wedge, and that the eventual aim of the Islamic Brotherhood is to introduce elements of Sharia into the (as yet unwritten) constitution. Their concern is shared by the Copts. A significant minority, they are variously estimated at between five per cent and 23 per cent of the Egyptian population depending who you choose to believe. The Copts have been persecuted and harassed for generations in Egypt, mostly at the hands of religious Muslims, and understandably view the election of a president from the Islamic Brotherhood with alarm. In order to quell this fear, Mursi has undertaken to make one of his vice presidents a Copt, but changes at the very top are simple; but the violence is often local and the administrative obstructions at a far lower level in what is a massive country.

Mursi also faces constitutional challenges. The most obvious is that although he is president there is no written constitution outlining what his actual role is. There are indications based on previous regimes, but the overall impression is of an office surrounded by fog where the true responsibilities have yet to take shape. One institution that could have helped in this regard is the parliament. But the new parliament faces its own challenges, notable a ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court striking down the results of those MPs elected through the first-past-the-post system. Sixty per cent of eligible voters turned out to vote in the new parliament, with 498 elected and ten appointed seats making up a 508 seat House. The Muslim Brotherhood, through its political party The Freedom and Justice Party, won 127 seats through proportional representation and 108 seats through the first-past-the-post system, leaving them just short of a majority. With only one third of the total number of seats elected by first-past-the-post, any striking down of these elections would impact the Freedom and Justice Party to a greater degree than anyone else, with 108 seats out of 166 elected this way. The Islamic Brotherhood has cried foul, alleging that this is a coup and refusing to accept the ruling. The survivors of the Mubarak regime, who were at the same time allowed to stand for parliament (they had previously been barred) hailed the ruling as just, making it impossible for a single party to impose laws without reference to others. At time of writing the impasse remains unresolved, but it is clear that one part of the Egyptian state has a very clear idea of its role and powers; the judiciary.

The other part is the armed forces. Mr Mursi may have been granted his wish to have an Egyptian state on the Turkish model, but not in the way he anticipated. The president was clearly thinking about Turkey in the 2010s, whereas the army seems pretty determined that a Turkish model dating from the 1970s is more in order. The army expresses its political will through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf). The Scaf was formed immediately after the fall of Mubarak as a caretaker regime while Egypt elected a new parliament and president, but even at the time there was disquiet that the armed forces would steal the revolution and hem in the democratic forces for change. Mubarak, Sadat and Nasser had all been military men, and the role of the armed forces in Egyptian politics was unquestioned: the two were entwined in a complex embrace that a revolution was unlikely to split asunder.

These fears have certainly not been unfounded. The 21 members of Scaf, chaired by the Chief of Staff, General Tantawi, have not been shy in intervening in the democratic process. Many of these men are Mubarak loyalists and owe their careers to him, and the political opinions they held under Mubarak are still the ones they hold under the new regime. They are generally secular, cautious and know that they are heavily reliant on US aid. This, in turn, means they know the country has to follow Washington’s policy in the Middle East, which in turn means a toleration of Israel and a hostility to fundamentalist groups dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

This puts them on a collision course with elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, which comes as no surprise to any of them – particularly as the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole has been demonised for generations, inculcated a “group opinion” in the higher reaches of the armed forces that they are a dangerous and radical organisation. It is this attitude that explains the alliance with the judiciary (also secular and anti-Muslim Brotherhood) in order to hedge in Mursi and fillet the parliament.

President Mursi, lacking a clear constitutional definition for his office, has seen it fettered by Scaf in a way that was unlikely to have taken place if his opponent had won instead. For a start, Mursi has been informed, publicly, that General Tantawi will remain Minister of Defence. Meanwhile the Scaf also issued a declaration giving itself sweeping legislative powers and control over defence policy, and announcing the appointment of a panel to write a new constitution. But the judiciary did strike down a Scaf order that the military would have the powers of arrest; clearly the judiciary was going to retain its independence from the Scaf as well as from the government.

Now that Mursi has been announced as president, and certainly after he is sworn in (wherever that takes place), the Scaf will have less scope to burglarise the powers of the presidency or hem it in with restrictions. But it is clear that the new president’s major challenge is going to be developing working relationships with the Scaf. It is inevitable that, for a time at least, the armed forces will be watching Mr Mursi and whatever government he announces with sharp eyes. And Mr Mursi, lacking a large popular mandate, cannot afford to antagonise the Scaf as he has so many other issues on his plate, not least the day-to-day business of governing Egypt and trying to grapple with an increasingly catastrophic economic situation. The last thing he needs is an in-built opposition capable of initiating its own legislation and checking every move he wants to make. Mursi and the Scaf have to find a way of working together, which again forces Mursi to govern from the centre, but also raises awareness in the military that people power in Egypt is here to stay.

John Chisholm is intersec’s International Affairs Correspondent