The high court, packed with sympathizers of the ousted president, appears to be engaged in a frontal legal assault on the Muslim Brotherhood,
the once outlawed organization whose members swept to power in Parliament the spring and whose candidate was the front-runner for the presidency as well. The presidential election runoff is scheduled to go ahead Saturday and Sunday.
The ruling — which critics said amounted to a backdoor coup — means that whoever emerges as the winner of the runoff scheduled for this weekend will take power without the check of a sitting parliament and could even exercise some influence over the election of a future parliament. It vastly compounds the stakes in the presidential race, raised questions about the military rulers’ commitment to democracy and made uncertain the future of a constitutional assembly recently formed by the parliament as well.
June 14, 2012
"Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the Islamist-led parliament must be immediately dissolved..."
"... while also blessing the right of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister to run for president, escalating a battle for power between the remnants of the toppled order and rising Islamists."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
18 comments:
As Henry Kissenger once said about Iraq and Iran during their eight year war "too bad they both can't lose".
The only good thing about the Mubarak gang is all they really want is be able to keep stealing and staying in power unlike the Muslim Brotherhood which is also about stealing and staying in power running the people's lives and creating trouble elsewhere.
It's a sad (and ironic) state of affairs--perhaps the best the people of the Arab Spring can hope for is a return to that which they destroyed.
That Mubarak was a regular FDR. They should pass an amendment making it illegal to be deposed in revolution more than once.
The Muslim Brotherhood are the guys who killed Anwar Sadat.
Female genetalia and hairless boys are a bit safer, for the time being
Egyptians are smart guys. But the Islamic calls to stupidity wails out 5 times a day from the loudspeaker and that makes many go berserk and feel the Need For Killing Something.
With Egypt and Syria collapsing, the position of Israel has never been stronger...except for Obama's best friends in Iran who want them all to collapse at the feet of the coming 12th Imam.
If this was the decision of a truly independent judiciary, then they are extremely courageous.
traditionalguy said...
With Egypt and Syria collapsing, the position of Israel has never been stronger...except for Obama's best friends in Iran who want them all to collapse at the feet of the coming 12th Imam.
a Hostile Egypt, equipped as it is with 1005 M1A1 tanks can bankrupt Israel.
M1's are a bitch to kill straight up. the 1000 Arab tanks are more and better than the 700 or so Israeli tanks, though obviously the crews and the units aren't nearly as good.
But nearly all of the Israeli tanks are in the reserves.
However, Forward deploying a chunk of the Egyptian tanks into the Sinai puts pressure on the Israeli's to mobilize, which shuts down the economy. Thus they are faced with a scenario where they must go to war or are faced with the potential for an Egyptian armored thrust against the Israeli border forces.
And no, the Israeli's really don't have a large air capability to kill tanks. Absent a true tank killer like the A-10, air power just plinks away at a tank force.
The Egyptains can't win a war, but they don't have to, in order to hurt Israel
Israel is not in a "stronger than ever position".
It's only real benefactor America is in sharp decline, sick of endless Neocon wars.
Turkey, Syria, Egypt are not collapsing in weakness but becoming more radicalized. The Idiot Bush turned Iraq into an Iranian ally, much like Sharon drove Lebanon to being an Iranian client.
The Jews thought they were smart demanding 3.5 billion a year in perpetuity from the US back in 1978 so they would "make nice" with Arabs. The Egyptians were smart enough, or immersed enough in their own SOP bribery & corruption to see the obvious bribe Israel extorted from Carter - and demand their own 2 billion a year bribe and free loans as the other corrupt "Partner in Peace" - from the Uncle Sam milk cow.
They promptly invested it in precision high tech US weaponry, not just M1A1s, but a slew of F-16s and air defense systems.
As Drill SGT said, the Egyptians could be a huge problem for Israel by taking actions moving assets into the Sinai, that while short of war - will make it extremely hard for Israel to start new, elective wars with Iran, Lebanon, or Syria.
Belmont Club takes a moment to editorialize on Obama's foreign policy successes
"The administration has checkmated itself in such an epic manner as to beggar the imagination. Ordinary stupidity could hardly have effected such a comprehensive disaster. Mere imbecility would have been insufficient to the task. Only an arrogance that mistook ignorance and incompetence for “smart diplomacy” could have achieved such a train wreck."
Drill Sgt....You posit an attack across the Sinai like 1973's cordinated Yom Kippur attack by Syrian and Eqyption Armies. But today those two countries cannot feed their divided people without Iranian/Russian help.
I posit that the peace will be won in the middle east the way the USA won the peace after 1945 by being the one left undamaged and functional and surrounded by a destroyed world.
The UN envies that position of Israel. So sorry UN guys.
The court is gambling that the old regime can come back. The Brotherhood will ignore the court and do whatever it wants.
Egypt isn't going to be much of a threat to anyone. The army can't maintain their tanks without outside help, and the economy is collapsing. There's a lot of talk, but it's too late for Egypt to be anything but another basket case. Does anyone think the Muslim Brotherhood knows how to lead a country of 100 million people to prosperity?
Israel is in a pretty good spot- all their enemies are collapsing around them. From an American perspective, watching the Iranian-backed terrorists and the Saudi-backed terrorists fight in Syria is wonderful.
Sometimes, it doesn't matter how bad our foreign policy is. We just get lucky.
There was never any such thing as the "Arab Spring". That meaningless term was made up by Western Journalists and internet dingbats who followed "revolutionary" posts on Twitter, thought they'd somehow participated in some great, novel, socially mediated grassroots THING and then clicked away to Foursquare and Instagram once they'd lost interest.
The generals stood by long enough so that the liberals in the vanguard of the Arab Spring in Egypt would realize that they were pawns for the Islamists. If the generals take charge now, I don't think the "liberals" will be all that upset.
The fallacy that every country must be a democracy is the real problem here.
Egypt imports 40% of its' food (60% of its wheat). The plowshare is mightier than the sword when dealing with any government in Egypt.
Representative government is so...
infidel.
"The ruling ... also raises questions about the governing military council’s commitment to democracy, and makes uncertain the future of a constitutional assembly recently formed by Parliament as well."
Yep, the Muslim Brotherhood's (the largest in the parlament) commitment to democracy is not in doubt. At least, not in the NYT universe.
"The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party ..." Haha
Poverty, pestilence, and famine bring people closer to God. The Islamic Brotherhood will bring their people closer to God.
Post a Comment