THE SEVERAL major political forces competing for power in Egypt after last year’s revolutionary events toppled Hosni Mubarak are still locked in combat over who is to control this historic change. The dominant military have once more asserted their authority after a compliant court dissolved one-third of the parliament seats ahead of presidential results due tomorrow, expected to give victory to the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi.
Further decrees replacing a constitutional committee and protecting their budget confirmed the military’s determination to hold on to power. It is a great challenge to the mainly youthful and secular revolutionaries who led last year’s street revolts as well as the victorious Muslim party.
None of these forces are homogeneous, even though the senior military remain paramount because of their armed resources, economic interests and entrenched authority. Younger and more junior officers and men sympathise with those who took to the streets and demand further change. The Muslim Brotherhood draws vast support from vulnerable communities throughout Egypt. It has helped with welfare programmes through difficult times and benefits from its ability to organise in adversity. But it too has a generational tension as well as an emerging one about how to work with secular and less religious Egyptians. It also competes with more militant Salafist Islamic movements intent on imposing Sharia law. As for the non-religious forces, they are being forced by events to cooperate and clarify their goals.
These differences and divisions will ensure Egypt’s revolution maintains its momentum despite the setbacks to its democratic progress in recent days. It is much too early to conclude any one force has definitively secured control. Former president Mubarak remains in detention, the society enjoys far more freedom of expression and its contending forces more capacity to associate than before despite recurrent agitational fatigue and a yearning for stability amid the large middle class.
It is possible to see in these recent events further scope for democratic evolution, however high–handed the soft coup imposed by an arrogant military leadership. Assuming Mr Morsi is confirmed as president over Ahmed Shafiq representing the ancien régime, the resulting victory for the Muslim Brotherhood is proof that the organisation has large popular support, whatever the reservations about its governing programme. It will not now have the power to forge an alliance with the military many secular Egyptians feared as a premature end to the revolution. There will be ample opportunity for them to regroup in fresh parliamentary elections due by December, while the military will be unable to monopolise constitutional change however much they want to.
After decades of authoritarian military rule its citizens are realising political change can be slow and tortuous, with periods of rapid shifts followed by agonising reversals. Great interests are at stake and often in conflict, between generations, majority and minority religions, social classes and varying cultures.