Friday, July 12, 2013

The Clueless Coup

Since the coup in Egypt last week, ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood has been on the ropes with hundreds of supporters been arrested by the Egyptian military. However they will take heart from one thing; outside been good at arresting people, the coup leaders has been clueless about everything else!

Once they ousted President Morsi, the military quickly named Adly Mansour, a relatively mid-level judge, as interim President who said he wanted to form a government of national unity. However that one statement is about the only they got right since the coup because outside that, it has been a comedy of errors. Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning diplomat, was supposed to be prime minister, but his appointment was blocked by the Salafist al-Nour Party. The al-Nour party then withdrew from the talks to form an interim government when over 50 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were gunned down by the military in a sit-in protest.

Interim President Adly Mansour and the military had to quickly change tack. They named Hazem El-Beblawi, a liberal economist, as the interim Prime Minister, and Mohamed ElBaradei, who was supposed to be Prime Minister, is now the interim Vice-President. Interim President Adly Mansour also announced a new election timetable. The timetable was rejected as expected by the Muslim Brotherhood, but it was also swiftly rejected by the National Salvation Front (NSF), the main liberal opposition coalition who had supported the coup.

So now you have 2 important political parties who had at first supported the coup now withdrawing their support; a Prime Minister who is now the Vice-President; and an election timetable rejected by almost everyone. Oh, and for the kicker, the military has announce an arrest warrant for Mohammed Badie, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a move almost certain to enrage the supporters of the Brotherhood, but what's worse is that the arrest warrant came less than 24 hours after Interim President Mansour, the man they appointed, tried to offer the Brotherhood posts in his government.

This has to go down as one of the worst coup in history. A week after successfully ousting an elected President, the Egyptian military still cannot form a government to show to the rest of the world. It makes you wonder if they exactly had any plans on what to do after ousting President Morsi. So far, the answer seem to be a big 'No'. It seem the Egyptian military's hatred for the Brotherhood had overridden their common sense. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mursi was majority elected last year and already the elites are rattled. Must be Mursi is doing something that rattled their idlyic, corrupted existance. US is making it worse by being blind to the aspirations of the downtrodden population. Or is it US is just being themselves - forever instigating for their own agendas.
Drawing from history - US trying to take advantage on Bin Laden (Mujahiddeen) victory over the Russians. Rightly he thwathed the plans.

Another Syria in the making???

Ghost said...

I have no problem with the US playing favorites. After all, Egypt is an important country in the Middle East. What I have a problem is how can the army staged the coup and then not have a plan for the aftermath? Like Colin Powell once said, "If you break it, it's yours." The army staged the coup so Egypt is now their problem, and thus far they have been doing a terrible job.