Morsi Ousted By The Army...

Acleron said:
Part of the problem was that the people thought they had a democracy, Morsi didn't.
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So he wasn't elected?

Childlike Empress said:
If you wanna draw parallels to the US, make that a hundred million people signing a petition to oust Obama and then taking it to the streets on a set date.
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Considering 50% of Americans hate Obama with a passion that could happen. The other 50% of us that don't hate him would be very saddened if the military just went and did their bidding.

Elections are important. That's why you should both participate in them and put some real thought into who you are voting for. To me this whole mess in Egypt looks like buyers remorse. They will just keep protesting until their favored candidate gets in. At which point the other side protests and gets that guy removed too.

Taking to the streets to demand the military arrest someone that was elected to do their job because he wasn't the candidate you liked just doesn't sound like democracy to me. More of a mobocracy.
 
Travis said:
So he wasn't elected?



Considering 50% of Americans hate Obama with a passion that could happen. The other 50% of us that don't hate him would be very saddened if the military just went and did their bidding.

Elections are important. That's why you should both participate in them and put some real thought into who you are voting for. To me this whole mess in Egypt looks like buyers remorse. They will just keep protesting until their favored candidate gets in. At which point the other side protests and gets that guy removed too.

Taking to the streets to demand the military arrest someone that was elected to do their job because he wasn't the candidate you liked just doesn't sound like democracy to me. More of a mobocracy.
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Bullcrap 50% hate Obama with a passion. You're lucky if you can even get 50% of the population to vote.
 
This Army coup can't be good for democracy. The Egyptians don't seem to understand what democracy is. Protest is fine but they should have waited for the term to end before ousting Morsi. The electorate really voted for a theocracy because they thought if he's Islamic, what could go wrong. This will only add an air of illegitimacy to the next election. To really fix it they should give up their stupid religion but that ain't going to happen. Same goes for the rest of the middle east.
 
Morchella said:
The electorate really voted for a theocracy because they thought if he's Islamic, what could go wrong.
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Actually, they voted for him because he promised not to be a theocrat and to form an inclusive government, and because the other runoff candidate, Ahmed Shafik, was literally a tool of the previous regime (he was the last prime minister under Mubarak). And even then, Morsi barely squeaked out a victory, winning 51.7% of the vote to Shafik's 48.3%.
 
According to an interview with one of the military leaders I heard on the radio today, a major factor for the military to decide to intervene was that Morsi was in the process of making himself too powerful. According to the interviewee, Morsi had even proclaimed himself Pharaoh. If this is true, I understand and even approve of the decision to oust him. If it is true.

ETA: The "proclaimed himself Pharaoh" bit probably derives from the amendment to the constitution that he pioneered, making any laws he or his government created practically cemented in stone, not subject to amendment or appeal.
 
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uke2se said:
According to an interview with one of the military leaders I heard on the radio today, a major factor for the military to decide to intervene was that Morsi was in the process of making himself too powerful. According to the interviewee, Morsi had even proclaimed himself Pharaoh. If this is true, I understand and even approve of the decision to oust him. If it is true.
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I don't know about the Pharaoh part, but he'd certainly devoted most of his time in office to attempting to amass powers to the presidency that even Mubarak and Nasser didn't implement. He was a straight-up authoritarian and autocrat, who was already busily going about fatally wounding Egypt's nascent democracy long before the military stepped in and removed him.

ETA: The "proclaimed himself Pharaoh" bit probably derives from the amendment to the constitution that he pioneered, making any laws he or his government created practically cemented in stone, not subject to amendment or appeal.
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EDIT: And that would be an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. The military didn't destroy democracy in Egypt, they removed an aspiring and dictatorial theocrat that was in the process of dismantling democracy in Egypt.
 
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Morchella said:
This Army coup can't be good for democracy. The Egyptians don't seem to understand what democracy is. Protest is fine but they should have waited for the term to end before ousting Morsi. The electorate really voted for a theocracy because they thought if he's Islamic, what could go wrong. This will only add an air of illegitimacy to the next election. To really fix it they should give up their stupid religion but that ain't going to happen. Same goes for the rest of the middle east.
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Assuming he left a term end to pounce upon. Morsi seemed to think he'd been elected to be the next Mubarak.
 
Travis said:
So he wasn't elected?



Considering 50% of Americans hate Obama with a passion that could happen. The other 50% of us that don't hate him would be very saddened if the military just went and did their bidding.

Elections are important. That's why you should both participate in them and put some real thought into who you are voting for. To me this whole mess in Egypt looks like buyers remorse. They will just keep protesting until their favored candidate gets in. At which point the other side protests and gets that guy removed too.

Taking to the streets to demand the military arrest someone that was elected to do their job because he wasn't the candidate you liked just doesn't sound like democracy to me. More of a mobocracy.
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I did not vote for Obama, and I don't hate him with a passion. Wonder where I fit in the pie chart...

In any case, I would not consider the democracy in Egypt to yet be fully established.
 
My Egyptian friends posted "Happy Independence Day" on their Facebook pages after Morsi was ousted - apparently the coincidence of the date wasn't lost on them. Just thought I'd share that.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
Assuming he left a term end to pounce upon. Morsi seemed to think he'd been elected to be the next Mubarak.
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Exactly, he was ousted for trying to give himself too much power and the fear he planned to make Egypt fully Islamic under his dictatorship.

This issue raises the conundrum of are you allowed to elect a dictator? I say no as that is the end of democracy.
 
I did hear an interesting perspective on NPR from one analyst who was saying that part of the problem with the Egyptian Constitution as drafted did not allow for an impeachment process. Therefore, there was not really a legal way to remove him from office except for waiting for the next election cycle. This was as much a problem with the military who apparently did not want a clause in the constitution to allow for removal of a sitting president.
 
crescent said:
I am thinking that if this were a long established democracy, then GlennB might have a point. But this is a new democracy, with a new constitution. As the first leader under that democracy and constitution, Morsi should have focused more on the long term goals of the nation, rather than short term party dynamics.

There is no guarantee that the constitution would be perfect as first written. In the U.S. for example, our relative stability might be due in part to the fact that we replaced our first "constitution" (the Articles of Confederation) with the current constitution, then immediately and substantially amended it with the Bill or Rights. Even then, we had a horrible civil war and visited some extreme horrors upon African and Native Americans.

Morsi instead seemed to cling to the new constitution and focused on what was good for his political party (although, to his credit, he did initially resign from the Brotherhood in a show of neutrality). In an established democracy with checks and balances, that's not all bad (but not very good, either). In a new democracy, that can easily lead to a permanent one-party government. The Egyptian people seemed to figure that out before it was too late.

This is probably still in the beginning stages of change for Egypt. They've got to set up a functional multi-party democarcy in an environment where the Muslim Brotherhood will still be popular with a large segment of the population, and possibly now hostile to Democracy. Add the that the Salafists, who are siding with the rebels for now, but are generally hostile to democracy as well. Then there is the military, which is currently the side of popular opinion, but faces little accountability and is pretty much an unelected parallel government in its own right.

They've got to get democracy going, but the Brotherhood and the Salafists may not be inclined to support that any more, and the military may only support it when it benefits the military. The moment a popular leader tries to reign in the military, that popular leader may find the going very rough.
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I agree, with the caveat that, in hindsight, Morsi´s resignation from the Muslim Brotherhood was quite clearly not a show of neutrality, but a pretense thereof. His policies showed quite clearly that he was still very much an islamist at heart and had few, if any, qualms about using his power to enact the Brotherhood´s will into law.
 
I found this editorial, for a bit of balance:

In Egypt, get ready for extremist backlash

Morsy's gravest mistakes have resulted from a deliberate policy of accommodation and not, as is commonly believed, confrontation. He has allowed the military to retain its corporate autonomy and remain beyond civilian control. Furthermore, he included in his cabinet a large number of non-Muslim Brotherhood figures who jumped ship very quickly Monday when the going got tough, thus portraying the image that the government was on the verge of collapse.
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One way or another, Egypt is going to be a tough place to govern for a while.
 
Damien Evans said:
Bullcrap 50% hate Obama with a passion. You're lucky if you can even get 50% of the population to vote.
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:rolleyes:

ANTPogo said:
Actually, they voted for him because he promised not to be a theocrat and to form an inclusive government, and because the other runoff candidate, Ahmed Shafik, was literally a tool of the previous regime (he was the last prime minister under Mubarak). And even then, Morsi barely squeaked out a victory, winning 51.7% of the vote to Shafik's 48.3%.
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Holy crap a politician said things to get elected!

Do we have any real evidence he was planning on not stepping down at the end of his term?
 
Travis said:
So he wasn't elected?


...
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The Muslim Brotherhood assumed that the election was a one off affair and after they acquired power then democracy could disappear, it had served its purpose. The changes Morsi made to the constitution, the jailing of critics and the closure of non government controlled media outlets were not the behaviour of someone who had any love for democracy.
 
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