RE: The failing Muslim Brotherhood.
July 7, 2013 at 7:48 pm
(This post was last modified: July 7, 2013 at 8:04 pm by Anomalocaris.)
The problems of Egypt has no practical solution. Basically Egypt can't feed itself, and big parts of its economy isn't productive enough to enable large parts of the population engaged in it to afford unsubsidized imported foodstuff. But Egyptian economy can't produce better opportunities for these people, nor has not successfully conditioned its population to accept the resulting realit that starvation of some members of most people's extended clan should be accepted as a fact of life in this still heavily culturally tribal country, as many other developing countries like India has done. So to maintain social stability, government must runs a ruinous subsidy program on imported food.
As a result, the government is chronically so close to bankruptcy, that no reform could have time to mature without pushing the country into actual bankruptcy, and with it collapse of its ability to continue to subsidize import of food. This will lead to immediate starvation and chaos.
Egypt's problems really needs two things:
1. Massive lowering of international food prices.
2. Governmental stability that facilitates A long term view with emphasis on deep structural reform of the economy
Neither are likely to happen. The second in particular.
If you look at the constitution Morsy sponsored, you can see that far from being a raving religious fanatic bent on imposing sharia upon Egypt, morsi and his Islamic brotherhood were working from a very weak position, had accommodated the outrageous demands of secular military to an humiliating degree, and really was in no way capable of creating the sort of stability long term structural reform requires.
Basically, to keep the secular, US trained and supported armed forces from deposing him, Morsi consented to the following demands upon the constitution by the Egyptian army:
1. The minister of defense must be a serving military officer appointed by the army
2. The army by the new constitution has complete institution autonomy so that morsi's civilian government has no say in its recruitment, promotion, internal rules and regulations, and its deployments
3. The power to declare war and conclude peace rests with the army, not with Morsi
4. The army is the final arbiter of egypt's national security, and as such has absolute veto power over any laws passed by Morsi and his civilian government.
As you can see, far from subverting democracy to install Islamic theocracy, Morsi was always under the thumb of the army. In the end they decided to crush him and Islamic brotherhood like a bug anywhere Eventhough Islamic brotherhood was prepared to cede to the army the power to be a state within a state.
As a result, the government is chronically so close to bankruptcy, that no reform could have time to mature without pushing the country into actual bankruptcy, and with it collapse of its ability to continue to subsidize import of food. This will lead to immediate starvation and chaos.
Egypt's problems really needs two things:
1. Massive lowering of international food prices.
2. Governmental stability that facilitates A long term view with emphasis on deep structural reform of the economy
Neither are likely to happen. The second in particular.
If you look at the constitution Morsy sponsored, you can see that far from being a raving religious fanatic bent on imposing sharia upon Egypt, morsi and his Islamic brotherhood were working from a very weak position, had accommodated the outrageous demands of secular military to an humiliating degree, and really was in no way capable of creating the sort of stability long term structural reform requires.
Basically, to keep the secular, US trained and supported armed forces from deposing him, Morsi consented to the following demands upon the constitution by the Egyptian army:
1. The minister of defense must be a serving military officer appointed by the army
2. The army by the new constitution has complete institution autonomy so that morsi's civilian government has no say in its recruitment, promotion, internal rules and regulations, and its deployments
3. The power to declare war and conclude peace rests with the army, not with Morsi
4. The army is the final arbiter of egypt's national security, and as such has absolute veto power over any laws passed by Morsi and his civilian government.
As you can see, far from subverting democracy to install Islamic theocracy, Morsi was always under the thumb of the army. In the end they decided to crush him and Islamic brotherhood like a bug anywhere Eventhough Islamic brotherhood was prepared to cede to the army the power to be a state within a state.
