Living Hour By Hour
"If he doesn't retreat and denounces what he has done, there will be more trouble because we are not going to stand for it. There must be no U-turn for our revolution. The Brotherhood has closed minds and do not wish to consider our opinions. They claim they have received something special from God and that we haven't."
Emad Parsom, Egyptian demonstrator
The old bromides expressed by the military that Egyptians are all brothers: "we are all Egyptians, so what are we fighting", is no longer making the solid impression with the protesters that they did a year and a half ago. Although the military has stood back, declared themselves one with the people, allowed the pro- and anti-Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood protagonists to go at one another with cudgels up to now, more recently there have been clashes between the military and the protesters.
The presidential palace is held to be inviolable. The protesters have marched, encircled and stormed the barricades erected by the security forces of barbed wire. Surging to the outer walls of the palace on Friday, they have sprayed the graffiti of rejection and ouster on the walls, delivering yet another series of messages, all claiming the same thing, that they wish their new president to depart.
He will not. He has no intention of declaring any concessions to the demands made of him. His message to the people of Egypt has not been of conciliation, but one of defiance. It is he who rules, not they. It is as though he has succumbed in his brief flirt with power and diplomacy on the world stage at a grim time of regional upheaval, that he has been invested with semi-divine status, like the pharaohs of old.
An allusion and illusion quaint when looking back at ancient history, at a time of grand imperial achievement and an ancient culture, but fairly distasteful in the present. Favoured of the gods were the ancient pharaohs, and now the current one is been granted great favour by God. Egyptians pride themselves on their unwillingness to be a violent people. Their latent resorts to violent dissent has alarmed the populace.
Six dead, 700 injured in the Wednesday-night violence. And the speech delivered, nationally televised Thursday, by President Mohammed Morsi solved nothing whatever, it gained nothing, not a lull in the decibel-level of the protests and the willingness to remain in tents in Tahrir square, defiant and demanding, nor a glimmer of hope that the beleaguered but arrogant president would back off his measures of personal power.
The draft constitution will remain as written, no alterations can be anticipated. The vote will proceed on December 15. Egyptians must accustom themselves to living their lives, every moment of them, in an Islamist atmosphere, under Sharia law. Nothing would be purged, cancelled or delayed. His presidential decree would not be repealed; his powers would remain unchallenged by law and by protests alike.
He would relent sufficiently as to allow an audience with spokesmen, leaders of the opposition. He would listen, he would be attentive, but nothing would be altered to suit the demands of anyone other than himself and his party. Leftists, liberals, Christian Egyptians will have to accustom themselves to the changes; they have no other option.
To chafe at the will of the people which democratically voted for him is to be an enemy of Egypt.
"Leave! Leave! Leave!" they responded.
And some have, in fact. The head of state television and another senior official have resigned from their official status. Altogether this brings to eight the number of close advisers who have quit in disgust in the past week as a result of the violence and their differences of opinion over the path the president has taken. Morsi's colleagues, the hardliners among the Brotherhood, insist he not grant concessions.
Brotherhood supporters armed with stones, fire bombs, even firearms began an assault that appeared co-ordinated, against the demonstrators with their tent camp outside the palace. They were met by secularists prepared to counter the attack with similar weapons of their own. Shops were looted, people injured, sound and fury filling the air.
"There was gunfire, shops were broken into, the Brotherhood and the revolutionaries both ruined everything", moaned a Christian woman. "People were banging on the entrance downstairs, trying tor each safety. It was total chaos. We now live hour by hour", she said.
The violence, some feel, revealed the true face of the Brotherhood, undermining President Morsi's authority. "I am happy about it. It provided the Brotherhood with a chance to show how much they love blood and that they do not care about the opinions of other Egyptians. We now understand better that freedom has a price", said Bassel Faoud, a management consultant who had filmed the fighting.
Labels: Chaos, Communication, Conflict, Culture, Egypt, Human Relations, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, December 08, 2012
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