Revolutionary Socialist statement on Egypt

I don’t normally gravitate in the Party’s direction, but I think they’ve shown integrity and alertness in Egypt for the past two years better than any other force I can think of. Their statement about today’s events is HERE, and I can’t find anything to disagree with in it.

It was one thing for the Army to step in in response to a mass expression of popular discontent on June 30. But quite another thing for the Army to ask for another such show of support now, in order to bolster its own aims.

The Army in Egypt can always fight terrorism when there is real terrorism to be found (and there is plenty of it brewing in Egypt, especially lately, and I do hold Morsi partly responsible for that). But to ask for a popular mandate to “do what is necessary” to combat terrorism suggests exactly what the RS statement drives at in their opening paragraph.

[ADDENDUM: There is one potentially misleading claim in the statement: “We do not want to find Morsi on trial for the murder of the martyrs of Port Said, and others. It was Mubarak/Morsi’s police which was responsible.” Morsi was not elected until late June 2012, nearly five months after the Port Said football massacre which took place in early February 2012. The RS obviously knows this, so I would assume they are not blaming Morsi undeservedly for a grisly event that predated his time in office. As for whether Mubarak’s police were responsible for Port Said, I’ve seen no clear evidence of this, though it is the subject of widespread speculation in Egypt.]