Lack of Legitimacy Haunts Egypt’s Regime

By: Kayhan Int’l

Egypt, the most populated Arab country is facing a crisis of legitimacy because of the lack of support from the masses for the military-based rulers who were placed at the apex of the political pyramid in 2013 by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, after overthrowing the only instance of real representative rule in the nation’s millennia long history.

The hundred million Egyptians, who enjoyed a brief two-year of freedom and a truly elected government of less than a year, resent the repression by President General Abdel Fattah as-Sisi, but there is little they can do to revive the popular movement that ended in 2011 the 30-year US-backed dictatorship of Air Marshall Hosni Mubarak.

The main cause of disillusionment is the fragmented political scene with no group, whether nationalist or religious, including the banned Muslim Brotherhood, capable of mobilizing the masses against rampant corruption, suppression of civilian rights, economic slump, and the subservience of the rulers to even such sworn enemies of Islam and Muslims as the US and the illegal Zionist entity.

In such a situation, where there is no dynamic figure to instill national unity amongst the people, dialogue is the only way out of the crisis, but not the kind of selective dialogue being proposed by Sisi.

The regime does not want any participation in nation-building by the Muslim Brotherhood, most of whose senior figures, as well as thousands of activists, are languishing in prison.

The Brotherhood’s leadership in exile, mostly based in Qatar and Turkey, claims that despite the imprisonment of some 60,000 of its members, it is still the only grassroots party.

Critics, however, point out that the Brotherhood during its brief rise to power failed to present a viable model of administration to the people on the basis of Egypt’s rich Islamic cultural heritage.

It also proved incapable of discerning friend from foe by ignoring the brotherly advice from the Islamic Republic, and trusting the seditious Salafis, such as the an-Noor party, which believes in violence and apostatizing of fellow Muslims.

It is worth recalling that President Mohamed Morsi had turned a blind eye to the brutal lynching of Shi’a Muslim religious scholar, Mohammad Hassan Shehata, shortly after whose cruel martyrdom, he was overthrown by the military which was heavily bribed by Saudi Arabia, the mother of all Salafists.

Whatever the “ifs” and “buts”, Cairo is presently under the tight control of Tel Aviv and Washington, which will never allow Egyptian people to wake up again from the political-cultural slumber, because of fear that a strong Egypt will accelerate the end of Israel.

Still there is no cause for despair. Egypt is too important an Islamic country to be always at the mercy of outsiders. The people and the conscientious scholars, as well as politicians, religious figures, merchants, and technocrats, should get together to explore the possibilities of infusing new life into the ancient nation, in order to overcome the crisis of legitimacy.