Egyptian Revolts: Behind the Narrative -- a Conversation with Mariz Tadros

One of our Fellows at IDS, Mariz Tadros, is an expert on political movements and is Egyptian. After reading the Western media, I was puzzled: why is there such relief that a democratically elected President has been ousted by the mob and the military?

These are the questions I posed, and Mariz's interesting answers are in green. Thanks Mariz.

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Mariz, help me out. This is the standard narrative.

1.  Morsi was elected in a free and fair election. He won narrowly but decisively.

I am afraid it was neither free nor fair- he won by a slim margin (less than one percent) but there was evidence collected by independent sources (AlAhram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies for example) that fraud and voter rigging. These were not taken serious by the electoral commission because they were not independent.

2. He has governed at best incompetently, at worst, autocratically shutting down democratic institutions

Yes, absolutely, and the same precursors that existed before the January 22th Uprising were prevalent in this case as well, i.e. a military disenfranchised and feeling oppressed, worsening economic policies, the absence of any corporatist, inclusive system of governance and the monopolization of power on a macro and micro level in the hands of the Brothers, who basically treated their coming to power as a case of winning the war and distributing the booty (posts) between them. In fact we predicted that we will have another revolt and made this prediction public at least a month before the protests: See Egypt’s Unfinished Transition or Unfinished Revolution? Unruly Politics and Capturing the Pulses of the Street

3. A broad spectrum of citizens have called for him to step down 

Exactly -- the breadth of the citizenry surpassed that witnessed in the 25^th of January revolution of 2011: Participation, Power and Social Change blog - Missing the pulse of Egypt's citizens

4. The military, funded by the US, have enforced this desire 

Yes, the combined forces of the youth movements who had called for the 30^th June revolt, the religious leaders, the ultra radical Islamist Salafis all met with the military and agreed on a roadmap that would NOT involve the military heading Egypt, but the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, until a new constitution is drawn and elections are held. See Mariz Tadros' article 'Opportunities and pitfalls in Egypt’s roadmap' on Open Democracy

However, it is important to remember that the military went AGAINST the desire of the US by responding to the people’s demand for intervention- and which now has meant that the American administration which has supported the Muslim Brotherhood since 9/11 has now threatened to cut aid to Egypt. This may in fact explain the extraordinary bias in the western media and think tanks towards unilateral support for the Muslim Brotherhood against the Egyptian citizenry.