Tick tock

The 48-hour Egyptian army ultimatum expires tomorrow .  The military seems to have no intention of removing President Morsi, which would generate a destabilizing Muslim Brotherhood backlash.  Instead the army says failure of the politicians to reach an agreement would require the military to impose a road map for future elections, presumably including an early presidential poll.  This would be a soft coup.  A good part of Morsi’s opposition would welcome an army-imposed road map so long as they could expect it to lead to the end of his presidency.  The Cairo stock market rise yesterday suggests the idea is popular also in the business community.

Today though is a different matter.  The Brotherhood will try today to demonstrate strength and support for Morsi’s “legitimacy” through street presence, which will include substantial numbers of armed men.  Clashes with Morsi’s opposition are inevitable.  They could of course spiral out of control, something the military would not welcome.  It might even push them past a soft coup to a harder one.

Morsi’s opposition has the upper hand for the moment.  It can continue to insist on his resignation and try to sustain its presence in the streets into Ramadan, which begins next week.  Or part of it might compromise, settling for a reshuffled national unity government with significant secular and moderate Islamist representation as well as a promised resignation and an early election date.  But some of Morsi’s opposition also rejects the current constitution and wants a new one even before elections.  It is hard to see how demands for a new constitution can be reconciled with the demand for early elections.

The Egyptian army is trying to avoid responsibility for actually governing the country, which it did poorly in the aftermath of the February 2011 fall of Hosni Mubarak.  But the military may end up with little choice.  The prospect of continued instability could compel General Sisi, who chairs the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to go further than he now intends.

The Muslim Brotherhood is discredited but will not disappear.  It has deep roots in Egypt and even now would garner a substantial number of votes, though presumably far fewer than it did last year, when secularists and moderate Islamists generally voted for Morsi to block a Mubarak holdover from the presidency.  The Brotherhood’s Salafist competitor, the Nour Party, may benefit from its decline more than the secular opposition.  Islamist politics in Egypt have suffered a blow, but in a democratic system they would be likely to recover, albeit not to their previous strength.

So the clock is ticking, but we don’t know whether it is counting down to a road map and orderly transition or to another explosion of violence and recriminations.  The only certainty is that Egypt is not at the end of its travails.