On July 3, the Egyptian minister of defense declared the ousting of elected president Mohammed Morsi from power, the dissolution of parliament and the suspension of the constitution.
After these events, political analysts started appearing on TV either as supporters or as opponents, saying that President Morsi had made mistakes without truly understanding the real mistake that could topple the first president after the revolution.
There is no doubt a corrupted interest group network (deep state) in Egypt that includes army officers, businessmen, bureaucrats, police officers, etc. was very active during the first year of Morsi's rule and that their actions were enough to overthrow any president. The media were working to create and strengthen the bad image of the Muslim Brotherhood and their policies. Corrupted elements in the bureaucracy were creating crises of gas, electricity, etc. so that citizens would condemn the Ikhwan rule. However, President Morsi's real mistake was in his conservative, non-revolutionary discourse in dealing with the deep state and the major players of the Jan. 25 revolution. Morsi thought the taming of the deep state in Egypt was under his control; however, his conservative policies were neither efficient in the face of the deep state nor did they help him preserve the little majority he had won in the 2012 elections, which led him to face the quick alliance between revolutionary youth movements and the Tamarod movement within months.
On June 30, 2012, Morsi was declared the president of Egypt after facing strong competition from old regime candidate Ahmed Shafik. He assumed leadership of the country from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) but no steps were taken to achieve transitional justice between February 2011 and June 2012. As a civilian candidate nominated against a military candidate from the old regime, Morsi acted as the candidate of the revolution (to some degree) and thus should have adopted a revolutionary approach against corrupt state institutions and the major players of the revolution. Unfortunately, conservativeness was the dominant theme of his actions during his year in power. Morsi's lack of revolutionary ideas in dealing with issues of transitional justice, corruption in the police apparatus and investigations over political clashes that took place during his year in power — such as the Port Said and Itihadiya (presidential palace) events, etc. — heightened the idea that a conservative president cannot achieve the goals of the revolution.
When Morsi won, people on the streets and the revolutionary youth were waiting to see Hosni Mubarak regime members and the military officers involved in the killing of youths during the Jan. 25 revolution and post-Mubarak events like Maspero, Mohamed Mahmoud Street, Maglis el Wozara and Port Said in jail. Egypt's lemon squeezers — those who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate not out of their leanings for the Islamist organization or the ideology of its candidate, but rather out of dislike for the other candidates — had large ambitions and great expectations of establishing revolutionary courts for the killers of protesters under Morsi's rule. However, the opposite happened; old regime symbols like Safwat Al-Sherif, the secretary-general of former ruling party the National Democratic Party (NDP), Ahmed Fathi Sorour, the head of Mubarak's parliament, and others were handed innocent verdicts by courts. Morsi promoted ex-heads of the SCAF, Hussein Tantawi and Sami Anan, to be his military advisors after bestowing them with medals of honor instead of sending them to trial for their crimes between February 2011 and June 2012. Morsi also did not submit a report by a fact-finding committee which he appointed to the general prosecutor, a report which is said to contain new evidence on the old regime symbols. If Morsi had adopted a revolutionary rhetoric through establishing revolutionary courts and taking action concerning achieving transitional justice from the Mubarak regime and the SCAF period, he would have kept the lemon squeezers in his pocket and increased his legitimacy on the streets and with revolutionaries.
In terms of corruption in state institutions, mainly the police, again Morsi's conservative discourse could not find a place with the public who were frustrated by the absence of security. In different speeches, the president highly praised the role of the police in restoring public order, forgetting that this was the same police who had shot protesters during the Jan. 25 revolution and who were involved in bribery cases and full of corruption. This does not mean that he should have dissolved the police apparatus but Morsi should have taken steps that would have altered the police's mandate from regime security to citizen security.
In his speech before the last one, Morsi said that “police officers are asking me how they can restore public order if, at the same time, they are being held to account by courts.” This statement reflects just how poorly he dealt with this corrupt institution.
Morsi was faced with the dilemma of either being a conservative reformist or a revolutionary reformist. During an interview I conducted with Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Foreign Relations Secretary Mohamed Sodan after the 2012 presidential elections, he told me they are afraid of adopting radical change in the state systems in order not to face any resistance or disobedience from the state. However, they should have thought about a Plan B beforehand if the state did not respond to their slow-reforming policies. If Morsi had planned a massive change in the Ministry of Interior, he would not have witnessed the presence of police forces on the streets protesting against him.
Moreover, the president appeared to be very weak in confronting clashes which took place in front of Itihadiya and in Port Said. During his uncompleted term, no real investigations were conducted over those behind these events or over Ikhwan members involved in attacking the Itihadiya strike. The president's reaction was to just make long speeches with reference to the hidden hand of the deep state. This passivity not only enlarges the gap between Ikhwan and the revolutionary youth or lemon squeezers but also encourages the deep state to wage more attacks on the weak president.
To conclude, Morsi's mistake was adopting the wrong ruling strategy after June 30, 2012. Using the legitimacy of the Jan. 25 revolution along with its just goals would have been an efficient weapon in confronting the deep state and old regime networks in Egypt. Practicing legitimacy through taking steps favored by the people can be a good way of taming this deep state and this is what Egyptian history has shown. When Anwar Sadat came to power, he could not rule the country because of the intransigence demonstrated against him by the powerful police, army, intelligence organization and the Arab Socialist Union after the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser. He took some measures aimed at increasing his popularity on the streets — he personally burnt secret records kept by the political police on citizens and released thousands of political prisoners once he came to power — called a “corrective revolution.” As a matter of fact, these steps were not taken to achieve democracy in Egypt but to gain support on the streets to increase his legitimacy against these powerful institutions. He succeeded in doing so and remained in power from 1970 until 1981, while Morsi lasted just one year.
Whether legitimacy on the streets can indeed be fruitful in the face of the rooted deep state in the Egypt of 2013, Morsi has missed the opportunity to try Sadat's strategy in confronting state institutions and missed achieving a real revolution, not a fake one like that of Sadat.
