The End Game

"The referendum is not the end game. It is only a battle in this long struggle for the future of Egypt.  We will not allow a change to the identify of Egypt or the return of the age of tyranny."
National Salvation Front

While the opposition battles the nascent government of Egypt, the country becomes mired ever deeper in economic collapse.  The original reason behind the protests that began in Tahrir Square was to protest for relief from wide unemployment, from food scarcity and expense, from rising fuel prices, from the brutality of the police, from lack of opportunities for advancement on a personal level.

Tacked on to that fundamental list of basic needs was the political element of egalitarianism and freedom usually attached to democracy brought to the fore and eliciting interest from abroad, by the activities of young leftists, secularists, socialists, and Christians.  There was no evidence in their midst of the presence of fundamentalist religious groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, much less the Salafists.

They came later, quietly slipping into the background, encouraging the activist youth, and pledging their assistance in the universal battle against the regime, seen as corrupt, autocratic, unjust.  The Egypt that was then has been transformed into a manipulative, autocratic and threatening Islamist administration whose menace in imposing Sharia law and further marginalizing the already disenfranchised threatens the future.

The future is also horribly hampered by the financial situation Egypt now finds itself mired in.  Setting aside for the time being the rising crime rate, the lack of security, the plight of Egyptian women and Egyptian Copts, unemployment has risen just as the state coffers have collapsed, and basic necessities of life have become scarcer and more unaffordable.

And in this setting of dysfunction a draft resolution for a new constitution, designed by a majority of Islamists has alarmed a hefty proportion of the population whose brief flirtation with celebration over the downfall of a corrupt, tyrannical regime has been replaced by disbelief over the ascension of a corrupt, tyrannical regime with sturdy religious overtones.

Egypt's finance ministry has revealed a budget deficit of $13 billion representing July to November.  The International Monetary Fund has refused a loan to extricate Egypt from its perilous appointment with economic collapse,  President Mohammed Morsi is now loathe to impose new taxes on a public already burdened with his administration's inability to begin to lift Egypt out of its financial mess.

The opposition paints the draft constitution as one meant to enshrine Islamist rule and monopolize power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. No surprise there.  The rights of women and minority groups are not assured, particularly given the direction that things are moving toward, enabling Muslim clerics to affect legislation.

The judiciary has denounced their new government's actions in attempting to dilute their power to challenge the Islamist-dominated parliament and the panel re-writing the constitution.  Removing the  prosecutor general, as an unwanted remnant of the old regime has gained the Muslim Brotherhood an antagonist it can ill afford to foster. 

The opposition refuses to have any of its members nominated to the Shura Council. Doing so would give legitimacy to an administration it insists has risen to its place of prominence through illegal, corrupt manipulation of the electorate and the electoral process.

Reconciliation seems remote at this juncture, and the future of Egypt looks fairly frail from this complex perspective.