Ousting Morsi in Egypt: An ugly moment of irony for liberals

It was an odd kind of coup. Military generals announced the overthrow of a lawfully elected government with the full support of a Nobel peace prize winner, Mohammed El Baradei who called it “the beginning of a new launch for the 25 January revolution when people offered their dearest to restore their freedom, dignity and social justice for every Egyptian.” The suspension of the constitution and widespread arrests was cheered on by crowds of young Egyptians who were protesting Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship a mere 12 months ago. It marked an ugly and unwelcome moment of irony for the champions of liberal democracy. “I’m old enough to remember the time when liberals were against decree powers, military rule, arresting journalists & banning TV stations,” tweeted Shadi Hamid, director of research for the Brookings Doha Center, and followed up with this acid recommendation: “To avoid another coup, new president should decree all future elections free/fair, under the condition an Islamist party doesn’t win.” [caption id=“attachment_928433” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Celebrations after Morsi’s ouster: AP[/caption] Hamid is right. Elections are the bedrock of liberal democracy. No good can come of ignoring popular will – however illiberal or authoritarian its sentiment. A Morsi cannot be thrown aside merely because he isn’t the champion of democratic freedom every secular Egyptian was waiting for. Yes, Islamists are citizens too, their vote counting for no less than others. As David Gardner in the Financial Times rightly notes, “The Islamists did not hijack the Egyptian revolution, they were just far better organised than their liberal and leftist rivals in scooping up votes in the five electoral exercises that followed the fall of the Mubarak regime.” But Tahrir Square was also not an Islamic uprising against a secular dictatorship. It was a rejection of tyranny, whatever its form. “You are the source of power and legitimacy,” Morsi told the crowd at Tahrir Square in a speech made the day before his inauguration, “The nation is the source of all power. It grants and withdraws power.” Once in power, however, he failed to acknowledge a free nation’s other “sources of power and legitimacy” – individual freedom and political accountability –  which cannot be reduced to vote tallies. Morsi incurred the wrath of his people for flouting the very principles that elected him into office, the very principles they fought for with uncompromising courage which made possible his rise to power. Fareed Zakaria argues that Egypt’s great tragedy is that its bid for freedom lacked a truly democratic leader who could have shepherded a nascent democracy to the safe shoals of freedom. They found themselves saddled with a Morsi instead of a Mandela. If the coup dishonoured Egypt as an electoral democracy, Morsi made a mockery of Egypt as a constitutional democracy. He rammed through a post-Mubarak constitution framed and approved entirely by Islamists based on a unilateral decree that made him immune to judicial review. A democratic republic cannot be founded on an undemocratic Constitution. In the midst of the overwrought handwringing and jubilation, the last word belongs to Gardner who offers the most measured assessment of the coup in Egypt:

Is the fall of Mr Morsi a setback for democracy? Of course it is. But it cannot be taken in isolation. The spectacle presented by the first elected parliament after the fall of Mubarak – an Islamist-dominated assembly arguing about prayer times and obsessing over curtailing women’s rights – was a setback for democracy. Attempts to manipulate the judiciary by all sides – the generals, the Mubarak “deep state”, the liberals and the Brotherhood – were a setback for democracy. By no means least, the manifest inability of secular, urban and modern Egyptians to organise their political representation was – and remains – a setback for democracy.

Democracy lost when Morsi was ousted. But it would have gained little by keeping him in power. And it may never take root if liberal Egyptians continue to rely on guns to bolster their cause.