07.02.2013
• Morsi hit by more resignations
• Presidential aide says army ultimatum amounts to coup
• Record number of sexual assaults in Tahrir Square
• Obama says democracy is about more than elections
What next for Egypt?
The Guardian's Middle East editor Ian Black
examines three possible scenarios:
Outright military takeover
General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s defence minister,
demands that President Mohamed Morsi resign.
Morsi refuses, insisting he enjoys full democratic legitimacy.
Troops surround the presidential palace
and Muslim Brotherhood premises
and place Morsi under house arrest
with other senior Brotherhood leaders.
Morsi supporters, formed into militias,
take to take to streets to protest against what
they would call a "counter-revolutionary” army coup.
Egyptian media have already quoted military sources
speaking of the possibility of large-scale bloodshed
and “signs of state disintegration.”
Parallels have been drawn with Algeria in the early 1990s
before it descended into fully-fledged civil war. But the army,
stung by the unhappy experience of its 16-month rule
after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak, is likely to be reluctant
to assume direct power.
It prefers to stay in the shadows and mediate.
Silent coup
Morsi agrees under army pressure to call new presidential elections.
Some Islamist figures have mooted dates ranging
from October to January — provided they come second to
new parliamentary elections that the Brotherhood leadership
hopes would give them a majority sufficient to compose
the next government.
(The current lower house of parliament is suspended).
But that is likely to be far too leisurely for Morsi’s critics.
Another variant is the idea of holding a referendum
on whether to told a new presidential race.
The ultra-conservative Salafi Noor party
(flanking the Brotherhood from the right and protesting
that it is not doing enough to promote Sharia
law) supports this.
The mass protest movement Tamarod (Rebellion)
says Morsi must go and wants early presidential elections
with the head of the supreme constitutional court serving
as acting president in the interim. Opposition forces
say they don’t trust any vote held
under the rule of the Brotherhood.
Negotiations and stalemate
Morsi, taking heed of the army’s 48-hour warning about
its own “road map,” invites leaders of opposition forces
to join a power-sharing unity cabinet to promote
national reconciliation and review the constitution
that was passed last year. Success is not guaranteed.
Simply shuffling the cabinet and appointing
a new prime minister is unlikely to assuage public anger
at the president. National Salvation Front leaders
Amr Moussa (a presidential candidate last year)
and Nobel laureate Mohammed ElBaradei might
well want to run for power with military
backing or acquiescence.
The former air force general Ahmed Shafiq, now exiled
in the UAE and seen as the candidate par excellence
of the Mubarak era counter- revolutionaries,
may harbour ambitions too after being
narrowly beaten by Morsi last summer.
الرئيسية 
