Understanding Egyptian Politics.

What should the left think about the Egyptian Crisis?

Here are some useful contributions from Arab Awakening.

It is essential to read the whole articles but these are some extracts.

Egypt’s long revolution: knowing your enemy

SAMEH NAGUIB and ROSEMARY BECHLER 29 July 2013

Sameh Naguib is a leading member of the Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt, in London to speak about ‘Egypt, the Arab Spring and revolution today’ and to research a book he is writing on the Egyptian revolution whose title he thinks may be,  ‘Egypt: the Long Revolution’.

Extract,

N: Well, the 30th June was a very complicated day. It confuses everybody all over the world; in Egypt and outside of Egypt, because what you have is two processes happening at the same time. You have on the one hand what is clearly a revolutionary wave involving millions and millions of the Egyptian people. On the other hand, the army and the old regime have used that unprecedented upsurge to get themselves back in the saddle and to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood.

So, formally-speaking it is undeniable that you have a coup. Obviously. The military removed the president, who we haven’t seen or heard of since that day. He was the elected president. He was democratically elected, so this is by definition a coup.

But at the same time, you have this massive outburst, even bigger than the 2011 uprising, that is unprecedented. It’s much more geographically widespread, and occurs at the peak of the biggest strike wave we have ever had in Egypt. In the months preceding the 30th June – you may not know this – we had the highest level of strikes anywhere in the world and not just in Egyptian history – a rate of approximately 500 strikes a week, that’s the average.

But to answer your question, the coup, in order to legitimate itself both within Egypt and outside – particularly for the west which is important – has a kind of liberal front.  So, all these people who have very good democratic credentials, like El Baradei, have been placed at the forefront as if there were an actual democratic process taking place. And importantly those people, and the financiers behind them, control the media in Egypt. They have big private media at their service, controlled by the billionaires who are supporting these two parties.

Egypt’s new interim government is not a leftist coalition

JOEL BEININ and GIUSEPPE ACCONCIA 29 July 2013

Joel Beinin: To be sure the army is aware that with this economic crisis, with rising prices and the fall in the import of wheat, the Egyptian people’s social rights have to be addressed. I would not say that the new government looks likely to follow this path. The prime minister Hazim Beblawi is a man of the centre and his government arises out of an agreement between the youth movements, the liberal party al-Dostour, led by Mohammed el-Baradei, and the Nasserists, supporting Hamdin Sabbahi: it is not a leftist coalition.

GA: In terms of political direction, what does the Minister of Manpower, Kamal Abu Eita, president of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, lend the government?

JB: Eita is a Nasserist, not a socialist. It is enough to read his first commentary after the offer: “Workers should become the heroes of production”. According to the Nasserists, strikes should never take place: the national economy must ameliorate to the point that all salaried workers can live properly. For this reason, Eita has been criticized by the left, for instance by Fatma Ramada, representative of the Independent Syndicates’ board, who harshly opposed his appointment.

GA: Have the Muslim Brothers lost their support among the Egyptian workers?

JB: They never had any such support. The workers in the industrial sectors showed their clear opposition towards the Brotherhood; for instance, by rejecting the Constitution in the Nile Delta region and Cairo, the biggest industrial areas of the country.

A: During this year, did the many leftist parties that supported the rebel campaign swell their ranks before the 3 July military coup?

JB: The true leftist parties, such as the Revolutionary Socialist party, do not have a significant constituency. They are not able to mobilize the workers. They had some political space before and after Mubarak: but the economic crisis alienated their support in the workers movement. The Tamarrod (rebels) always described itself as a big coalition. Among the signatures collected, a fifth come from the left. But this component is rather lost in nationalist discourses. The campaign which led to Morsi’s fall speaks to and for the nation, without expressing the demands of any one class.

Le Monde Diplomatique is an important source of information and analysis.

Shadow of the army over Egypt’s revolution

The Muslim Brotherhood proved vulnerable in power both to its old secretive culture and a new popular awareness of its inaptitude for government. But it has to be included in any pluralist attempt to restore democracy

by Alain Gresh

There may be surprise that an army source said 14 million Egyptians (some sources claimed as many as 33 million) demonstrated on 30 June, and that the army supplied the media with photos taken from military planes to back the claim (1). Or that interior ministry officials claimed the demonstrations were the biggest Egypt has ever seen. There may be scepticism over the 15 (or possibly 22) million signatures collected by the Tamarod (“rebellion”) movement for a petition demanding the resignation of President Mohammed Morsi; and over the claim by an “Egyptian philosopher” that the signatures were “recounted by the Supreme Constitutional Court” (2).

Whatever the exaggerations, the demonstrations were the biggest since January/February 2011. Egyptians gathered to repeat their demands for dignity, liberty and social justice, and to reject the policies of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

For those who read French this is important,  L’armée, les urnes, la rue par Serge Halimi, août 2013.

Tendance Coatesy’s own analysis, Arab Spring, Islamist Winter (December 2001)