São Paulo

I’m continuing to like this city a great deal. You do have to keep your eyes open, and there’s plenty of poverty, stress, and (man oh man) noisy traffic. But there is so much here to keep you interested.

another way of looking at it

What we all thought until recently was essentially: “The Brotherhood needs to move slowly, or the military may pull a coup d’état.”

But there’s no one left to pull a coup now. Omar Suleiman is dead. Ahmed Shafik is hiding in Dubai. Tantawi and Anan are now headed off into the sunset, along with many of their colleagues.

There is also no Parliament. So, what is now to stop Morsi from moving full steam ahead? As one of my former students put it on Facebook (and she wasn’t happy about it) we’re headed very quickly towards the Islamic Republic of Egypt.

I underestimated Morsi. He seemed to me like a bit of a bumbler in recent weeks.

a few other points

Reading THIS BLOG POST by The Arabist reminds me of a few things I forgot to mention.

*Morsi had also promised to name a Christian Vice President, and Mahmoud Mekki is definitely not a Christian. There could still be additional VP’s appointed, but one would have expected Morsi to act on these promises on such a big day to allay fears of a power grab.

*Morsi did eliminate the horrible June 17 declaration by the military that granted ridiculous pre-Revolution-type powers to the military. Good.

*The Arabist points out that with Tantawi and Anan receiving the Order of the Nile medal, they are probably being given amnesty for everything that’s happened since January 2011. Other military figures are being given plum jobs elsewhere in the system, and maybe that was enough for them.

*There is also this: “The overall impression I get is of a change of personalities with continuity in the institution. More junior officers are taking the posts of their former superiors, and some SCAF members are shifting positions. The departure of Tantawi was inevitable considering his age and unpopularity.” I don’t entirely agree with this assessment. The change of personalities is going to have a bigger effect than these sentences indicate. The new personalities will have been appointed by Morsi, after all, and thus will feel answerable to Morsi in a way that Tantawi and Anan would not have. Morsi has also set a precedent under which he has the right to replace people.

*the Arabist also says this: “It is not, as the initial reaction to today’s news largely was, a victory by Morsi over the military. Rather, it is a reconfiguration of the relationship.”

However, notice this contradictory statement later in the post: “It’s hard to think of a way to avoid this considering the lack of alternatives and the mess Egypt is in, but Morsi has effectively, on paper, dictatorial powers.”

That’s right. There is currently no Parliament, and the former senior leadership of the military has agreed to a massive retirement package from a President they were nearly willing to prevent from entering office just 6 weeks ago. I believe this is, in fact, a victory by Morsi over the military, and not just a reconfiguration of the relationship.

*

stunning day in Egypt

I’ve arrived back in São Paulo to learn that the story in Egypt is much, much bigger than the early version I posted below. HERE.

Where to start? Perhaps with this:

“Secondly, Morsi issued a decision to retire Hussein Tantawi, the minister of defence and the general commander of the Armed Forces. Morsi also retired Sami Anan, the Army’s Chief of Staff, from his duties.”

If you had told me yesterday that Morsi would try to do this today, I would have estimated a 90% chance of a military coup in response. Remember, Morsi was just barely allowed to be declared the winner of the election in late June. Just barely.

Tantawi was admittedly never taken that seriously, nor respected for either his intellect or personality (“one of the least charismatic figures in the Middle East,” a Western diplomat once put it). But he was still the head of SCAF. And Sami Anan was one of those people who, along with the late Omar Suleiman was  feared by the secular Left as a potential next Mubarak.

Now both of those guys are gone, “promoted” to being “Presidential advisors” in the same way that washed-up bank executives are kicked upstairs and never heard from again.

It didn’t seem to me like Morsi was anywhere near ready to pull this off. His attempt a few weeks ago to reverse the dissolution of Parliament, while justified, seemed shrilly confrontational and politically stupid, and he eventually backed down.

But now, it looks like he’s well on his way to breaking the back of SCAF. I’m stunned. He’s actually behaving as an independent, popularly elected President who can get away with doing so. I thought it would be 3-5 Years before he or his successor could get away with it.

Which is not to say that this is all good. Having pulled off the most difficult feat of retiring Tantawi and Anan, Morsi surely won’t stop there, and much of what comes next will send chills down our spine in the bad sense.

The Brotherhood also does not have a good track record of keeping promises. Among today’s announcements, I noticed the appointment of Mahmoud Mekki as Vice President. As best I can tell with the poor internet connection I have this afternoon, Mekki is a former senior judge, and judging from the name “Mahmoud” he is obviously also male. What’s wrong with that? Well, Morsi had promised to make his Vice President either a woman and/or someone very young. He would appear not to have acted upon that promise, and this isn’t the first promise they’ve broken, nor will it be the last.

 

The Brotherhood’s reflexive “we blame the Mossad” approach to the killing of the Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai also wasn’t very reassuring.

On the whole, I remain in my mildly pessimistic phase after all this news, and the real change in my views is that it looks as though things are going to start changing a lot faster than I imagined possible. And not always in a good sense.

President Morsi fires Tantawi

HERE.

I certainly won’t miss the head of SCAF, but more interesting is what a surprise this story is. It’s a surprise because I didn’t think Morsi had quite that level of power yet. I thought the Brotherhood would kind of chip away at the military establishment over time and take real power more gradually.

But here Morsi is, firing Tantawi just 6 or so weeks after he was barely allowed to win the Presidential election, and only a few weeks after trying what I and many others regarded as a rash political move: trying to reinstate the dissolved Parliament.

Perhaps the Brotherhood’s position is already stronger than we thought. Alternatively, perhaps there were simply divisions with SCAF and growing anti-Tantawi sentiment and Morsi capitalized on that.

Whatever the reason, I’m surprised this happened so soon.