Baheyya: Egypt Analysis and Whimsy بهية

In the old days, when the Israeli military bombed and shelled Palestinians and sought to destroy their society, Hosni Mubarak used a well-worn formula, fully abetting Israeli actions while uttering pro-Palestine platitudes.

Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has certified his seizure of power with an electoral pantomime, and looks set to preside over a reconstructed Mubarakist system. The revolution appears as a blip in the stubborn tradition of one military dictator transferring power to another.

An old and pernicious idea is back in circulation since the July 3 coup.

Rabaa Sit-in Mass Shootings, July 27 2013 (AP Photo)A non-exhaustive list of organized violence by military and/or police forces against unarmed citizens since the January 25th revolution.

If there were lingering doubts that the military pounced on the June 30 protests to re-establish its political supremacy, Gen. El-Sisi’s Sunday address removed a lot of them. Using convoluted language and tortured logic, the speech’s organizing premise is that the “people summoned the armed forces for the mission of balancing the tipped scale and restoring diverted goals.” “The people” are mentioned 28 times, but their sovereignty is not once affirmed.

Morsi’s opponents in the “National Salvation Front” have garnered plenty of criticism for being obstructionists, sore losers, or bad faith interlocutors, depending on who’s leveling the charge. My own view is that their fault is more basic than that, having to do with their half-baked idea of what a political opposition is.

Tahrir Square, June 8 2012

(Reuters)These are no ordinary presidential elections that we’re about to experience in two weeks, and not just because they’re the first real competition for the top job. They’re extraordinary because they’re being held in the shadow of an American-backed military junta.

As Egyptians are on the cusp of choosing their chief executive for the first time ever, the idea of popular participation is under attack. Revolution-fatigue is manufactured and promoted by the same intellectual peddlers who served Mubarak.

In the end, they leave, with hollow eyes and a few plain words. Stripped of their ill-gotten power, they are miserable, ashen, and base. All of the rhetoric they spewed lingers like a bad smell, soon to evaporate in the fresh air of freedom.