The question underlying the latest turmoil in Egypt is old as the game of politics itself. Plato and Cicero put it best: who guards the guardians?
The Egyptian Army says it has ousted the country’s first democratically-elected president to save democracy and constitutional rule in Egypt for a better day. Muslim supporters of Mohamed Morsi might say that this is a bit like the young US lieutenant in Vietnam saying that he had to destroy the village in order to save it.
International commentators have been playing word games over when is a coup not a coup. President Obama, for his part, has chosen his words carefully in blaming neither the army nor President Morsi, but urged Egyptians to get back to the business of trying to make democracy work.
Mr Obama is right. The stakes are too high for self-indulgent finger wagging. Besides he doesn’t have to shout at the Egyptian forces by diplomatic megaphone. They are his pensioners anyway. Of the $1.55 billion of US aid earmarked for Egypt for 2014, $1.3 billion will go to the army. The stakes are high for Egypt, and much of the world, and not just the Islamic world. Ed Husain, author of the Islamist, writes today: “Mohamed Morsi has been an experiment to see if Islamism can exist within a secular framework.”
So far that experiment has been a failure, and Mr Husain now fears that more extreme Salafist elements such as the Al-Nour party and the jihadis will reject the ballot box and take to the streets. This could spread to other Arab nations.
This fear is genuine, but not a given. It doesn’t have to happen. The Muslim Brotherhood, from which Mr Morsi and his Freedom and Justice Party derive their power and authority, is a highly complex movement.
His record in office has been pretty poor — concentrating on promoting Brotherhood cronies, and trying to grab more powers for himself while the country fell apart. Policing in many neighbourhoods has crumbled, and the economy for many of Egypt’s 84 million has gone from dire to worse. For all the rallies and celebrations, the opposition has been equally incompetent. They seem to have little clue how to organize for office and produce a programme that stands a chance of becoming practical policy.
Even so, all sides in Egypt must be encouraged to go to elections as quickly as possible. This time they must be properly run, and their outcome fully observed and implemented.
Furthermore, all sides, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and Al-Nour must stand again.
