Morsi’s sweetest choice is bitter: either to resign or to retract

People are dying, sit-ins are taking place at Al-Tahrir Square, and slogans therein are calling for dropping the regime. In fact, all those who followed the events of the Egyptian revolution that led to the fall of the Mubarak regime can note same things are having effect again in Egypt, after the Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has released a Constitutional Proclamation designed as he claimed to fortify his decisions, to take care of the interests of the nation, and to protect the revolution.

However, his opponents saw that Morsi is walking in the way of reproducing dictatorship under a religious guise through silencing the judiciary and hindering its role. This situation, described by Washington as unclear, dragged Egypt into a dark tunnel that has an unpredictable end especially that both sides are sticking to their positions. The parties are showing the size of their strength in front of each other by organizing demonstrations that gather millions of people supporting their ideas, what made Egypt be open to all possibilities, including the one related to a new revolution aiming at overthrowing the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime.

What is really going on in Egypt? Is it a war between the Islamists and the civil mainstream or between the presidency and the judiciary? Is it a personal war between President Morsi and the Attorney General, and have the fragments of this war reach the street? With reference to the backgrounds of the mounting political crisis in Egypt and the backgrounds of this conflict, we find that it seemingly reject the ruling of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, who were the reason for engaging Egypt in new alliances. More importantly, the Brotherhood’s members are single-handedly controlling the Egyptian public and important decisions after marginalizing other active factions and keeping them away from decision-making. This enables the heads of this movement to be exclusively managing all the procedures governing the country after controlling the keys of governance. This step was most recently represented in fighting the judiciary, which was in earlier stages able of winning two battles over the President, before being elected, by dissolving the Parliament in June 2012, and the second conquest was when the President was forced to retract his decision to invite the dissolved Parliament. President Morsi was powerless before the courts in different incidents and this caused the last pounce.

Yet, in a surprising step, President Mohamed Morsi caused the so-called a “civil coup”, when he retired the former Defense Minister, and the head of the military council, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and Chief of Army Staff, Sami Annan, solved the junta, and take out its legislative powers. Thus, he dominated the legislative powers, which were dragged by the judicial institution from the Parliament that has a Muslim majority, but the judicial institution led the war on the Brotherhood after isolating the political parties and the junta who were accused of dereliction. Attorney General Abdel Magid Mahmoud led the battle, who exonerated the civilians during the “Battle of the Camel”. Morsi took advantage of this to fire him after he has been appointed as ambassador to Vatican to decline later on because of the internal pressures being imposed on him by the judiciary, but he was defeated again in front of the Attorney General who assumed power during Mubarak’s era.

Some advisers who are close to President Morsi might have a hand in involving the President in the issue of the Constitutional Proclamation that broke the camel’s back, yet the Egyptian president was the mastermind in this issue on the grounds that the people and the political and national forces believe that what is intended to be done is farthest and most dangerous than the Constitutional Proclamation, mainly after limiting the powers of the executive authorities, the legislature, and the judiciary that became dominated by him only.

This was not previously done by President Mubarak, and this threatens of worse things that might happen in the coming days unless a miracle occurs in the next few hours, especially since a civil war might happen in any moment in light of what is declared by the demonstrating forces of a possible escalation politically to topple the Constitutional Proclamation and the President, who has betrayed the revolution and its principles, as believed by many.

Sources familiar with the developments confirm that the followers of Morsi who went to Al-Tahrir Square amid the protestors, as well as the spins of war in street between the supporters and opponents, make the situation more dangerous in the coming days, especially that the calls made by the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood movements who are supporters do not bode well. Some of them considered that the threatening calls by Brotherhood mentors, who called for jihad in case the legitimacy of President Morsi was defenseless, is a dangerous talk and that the Egyptian street is taking this threat seriously. Hence, all things are open to all possibilities in the coming days; the negative possibilities are the ones prevailing and the country is subject to what would have no end but only if choosing one of the two cases: either Morsi leaves the Presidency or the street becomes out-of-control and therefore a new Arab spring would occur and would not be different from the situation in Syria politically and militarily.