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.