TWO years ago crowds of protesters in Tahrir Square persuaded Egypt’s army to take the side of the people and oust the dictator, Hosni Mubarak. The disruption that marked the second anniversary of the country’s revolution was of a far darker sort. On January 25th thousands demonstrating against President Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood clashed with the police in Cairo and other cities, leaving at least a dozen dead. Things worsened the next day, when at least 30 more people died in riots after a court in Port Said sentenced 21 people to death for their part in a football riot a year ago in which 72 fans had been killed. Mr Morsi imposed a month-long state of emergency in three of Egypt’s steamiest provinces, telling the army to take control (see article). The army chief’s loose talk of a state heading towards collapse fed rumours of unrest and disloyalty within the armed forces.
For the young, mostly secular, revolutionaries of Tahrir Square whom the West cheered on, things could hardly have gone worse. A little over a year ago the Islamist party that sprang out of the long-oppressed Muslim Brotherhood handsomely won a general election held in stages over several months; last June, with the Islamists still on top but already beginning to lose popularity, Mr Morsi narrowly won the presidency. Since then he has rushed through an Islamist-tinted constitution endorsed in a derisorily low turnout by only a fifth of eligible voters.
Mr Morsi has spent the past few months seeking to entrench his group’s power rather than building a consensus that might tackle Egypt’s most daunting problems. The country’s economy, as a result, is somewhere between paralysis and meltdown. Many of the 83m people in the Arab world’s most populous country are growing increasingly fearful and angry as their currency falls, prices rise and jobs get scarcer. He has insisted that the sitting upper house of parliament, which was elected by only a tenth of voters and had been seen by many as a talking shop, is the sole legitimate legislature, even as it writes rules empowering the Islamists, whose media spew forth sectarian hatred, claiming that anyone who rebukes them is an agent of foreign powers. The proceedings that led to the recent death sentences for the football hooligans were secretive. Meanwhile, not a single policeman has been jailed for killing any of the 800-odd people who lost their lives for protesting against Mr Mubarak’s dictatorship.
Hope to hold on to
A general election, already delayed, is scheduled for April. With Mr Morsi resorting to methods reminiscent of the old regime, the country could be torn further apart before then. The risk is that this surge of violence will tip Egypt into a new bout of revolution, or that the army, with or without Mr Morsi’s connivance, may reimpose a dictatorship.