Did Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi really win election? What Robert Fisk says…
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 9, 2012
Did Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi really win election? What Robert Fisk says…
Robert Fisk published in The Independent daily on July 1 (with slight editing and rearrangement):
Rumors in Tahrir Square claim that the majority of 50.7 % of Egyptian voters cast their ballot for Ahmed Shafiq, (Mubarak’s former Prime Minister) in last month’s elections and that only 49.3 % voted for Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party. Why Morsi was inducted President? Apparently, the military were so fearful of the hundreds of thousands of Brotherhood supporters who would gather in Tahrir Square that they decided to hand out the victory to Morsi, after ten days of waiting for the results to be officially announced.
It is rumored from well-connected insiders that Mohamad el Baradei, Nobel prize-winner and former nuclear “watchdog”, was behind the secret meeting of Morsi with four leading members of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) in Egypt, four days before the election results were proclaimed and that Morsi agreed to accept his presidency before the constitutional court rather than the newly dissolved parliament – which is exactly what he did on Saturday.
(It is very doubtful that Baradei had the necessary weight to influence anyone in Egypt if it were not the US behind the planning and “facilitation”)
Morsi says there will be another election in a year’s time, although I have my doubts.
Behind this piece of fox-gossip is a further piece of information – shattering if true – that the Egyptian army’s intelligence service is outraged by the behaviour of some members of the Scaf (in particular, the four who supposedly met Morsi) and wants a mini-revolution to get rid of officers whom it believes to be corrupt.
These young soldiers call themselves the New Liberal Officers – a different version of the Free Officers Movement which overthrew the corrupt King Farouk way back in 1952.
Many of the present young intelligence officers were very sympathetic to the Egyptian revolution last year – and several of them were shot dead by government snipers long after Mubarak’s departure during a Tahrir Square demonstration. These young officers admire the current head of military intelligence, soon to retire and to be replaced, so it is said, by another respected military officer with the unfortunate name of Ahmed Mosad.
I have to say that all Cairo is abuzz with “the deal”, and almost every newspaper has a version of how Morsi got to be President – though I must also add that none have gone as far as the fox (Baradei). He says, for example, that the military intelligence services – like some of the Scaf officers – want a thorough clean out of generals who control a third of the Egyptian economy in lucrative scams that include shopping malls, banks and vast amounts of property.
Where does Morsi stand in relation to this? Even the fox doesn’t know.
Nor is there any plausible explanation as to why Shafiq set off to the United Arab Emirates the day after the election results were announced, reportedly to perform the “umra” pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. There is much talk of a court case against Shafiq going back to Mubarak’s era.
Baradei is expected to be appointed Prime Minister and would help Morsi keep the streets calm and allow Egypt to come up with an economic plan to persuade the International Monetary Fund to loan the country the money it needs to survive.
There is also talk of great tensions between the military intelligence and the staff of the interior ministry, some of whom are fearful that another mini-revolution will have them in court for committing crimes against Egyptian civilians during the anti-Mubarak revolution.
There are persistent rumours that the plain-clothes “baltagi” thugs who were used to beat protesters last year were employed to prevent Christians voting in some Egyptian villages.
Interestingly, when the ghost of late “Sultan Faruq” ran through election irregularities before announcing the presidential winner eight days ago, he said he didn’t know who prevented the village voters getting to the polling station.
All of which is quite a story. Not the kind that can be confirmed – but Egypt is not a country which lends itself to hard facts when the Egyptian press (a mercifully wonderful institution after the dog-day years of Mubarak’s newspapers) makes so much up.
But one fact cannot be denied. When he wanted to show that he was a revolutionary animal, the fox held out his back paw. And there was a very severe year-old bullet wound in it.
Note 1: Today, July 9, Morsi re-instituted the People’s Parliament that the military had deccreed unconstitutional on Juin 15, before the election of the Presidency, through Egypt High Constitution Court .
Note 2: According to Egypt current Constitution, The President has absolute monarch powers, and the level of this power has not yet been reformed or revised officially. The Moslem Brotherhood are faking that the president elect Morse has to navigate within reduced powers, just in case they fail to enact the necessary reforms that the revolution hoped for…That the military is also able to currently share in the power is a good signal that reforming the power of the President is necessary for a healthy and equitable democratic system that can be sustained without falling back into dictatorial tendencies…
Adonis Diaries 
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