Over the past few weeks, President Mohamed Morsi has become surrounded by an increasingly limited number of assistants and advisors, even as his first appointee, the vice president, submitted his resignation a few hours before the formal announcement of the results of the vote in the recent referendum. In other words, many of Morsi's earlier appointees have resigned and declined to continue in their jobs, while leaving those appointed later to continue in theirs. Most of those who have resigned have expressed their dissatisfaction with the modus operandi of the presidency in terms of its inadequate, if any, utilisation of their opinions or inputs in the decisions taken. The amended constitutional declaration of 22 November last year was a typical example of a presidential decision that did not receive the endorsement of many of those forming the so-called presidential team. Put differently, those assistants and advisors who have resigned have felt that their respective roles have not been properly appreciated by the president, and many of them have seen their selection as relating to the need of the presidency to reflect a false image of diversity rather than genuinely inviting meaningful contributions from outside. As a result, Morsi has ended up being surrounded by assistants and advisors belonging to his political trend of the Islamists and their different variants only. The criteria used to select these people have been simplistic, if not haphazard, as has the performance of the presidential team. The resignations of many of Morsi's aides have implications that need to be examined in terms of their relationship to current as well as future political events. First, the presidency as an organisation now obviously suffers from defective management procedures. The basic functions of management, as laid out by early writers on management theory such as Henri Fayol, including planning, organising, directing, motivating, controlling and staffing, and in the presidency's case these have been poorly performed. The presidency as an organisation has failed to fulfill such basic functions, as has been evidenced by its performance in the area of the presidential aides. Defective planning has been the rule here, as there have been no job descriptions, or even profiles, for any of these vital posts. Moreover, many of these aides have overlapped in their responsibilities with other appointees in the cabinet, a serious mistake that has added more confusion in addressing important portfolios like foreign relations, where the president's assistant has been obviously overriding the minister of foreign affairs. The control exercised by the president over his team has also been far from optimum. Some of the president's aides have caused much embarrassment to the institution, if not to the entire state, as a result. The case of Essam Al-Erian and his comments on Egyptian Jews is an example of such a selective laisser-faire management style on the part of Morsi when dealing with his close assistants. As such, some of the assistants, particularly those belonging to the Islamists, have become a liability rather than an asset with real added value. On staffing, it is hard to ascertain what the criteria used by Morsi in identifying the ideal candidates for these much-needed jobs were. With such basic management functions unfulfilled, many of the president's aides have become demotivated, a result that has been expressive of the presidency's failure to manage its own appointees, which it alone selected. Regardless of Morsi's legitimate motives behind the selection of his aides, there has been mismanagement in the identification of, and roles given to, these people. There is no excuse for Morsi's not having properly trained and managed his own team in order that it might achieve its purported objectives. Second, Morsi more than anyone has been in dire need of a team that has real talents and that can think ahead and lead rather than simply react to events. In the absence of such a team, there is a danger that Morsi will remain working within an embattled organisation that cannot articulate a clear vision of the Egyptian state and society or even formulate policies to address unmet yet legitimate popular demands. Morsi should therefore immediately start reorganising his own institution, the presidency, in order to tackle his immense responsibilities. This is part of the popular mandate that was given to Morsi. Constitutionally, he is accountable to the Egyptian people over the next four years, and he should work on delivering on his promises. His aides, provided that they were selected on solid and objective criteria based on competence and dedication, should be a major tool in laying out a new vision for the rest of the four years regarding both the state and the society. The reorganisation of the presidency is now vital if Morsi really wants to bring about real change in a highly toxic political and social landscape. Morsi should have realised that his reliance on his comrades in the Islamist movement has proven to be politically expensive as well as futile and that it cannot be sustained in view of the increasing public opposition to the unseen role played by the Muslim Brotherhood in presidential affairs. Moreover, the Brotherhood also evidently lacks a clear vision or a sufficient number of able people to run the country. In other words, the Brotherhood will be of limited help to Morsi in forming a dream team capable of bringing about the massive changes needed in post-revolutionary Egypt. There is a conflict of interest between Morsi as president of Egypt and Morsi as a dedicated member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is high time that Morsi grasped this lesson and worked independently from the Muslim Brotherhood. Third, Morsi himself is neither the state nor the Revolution. There is no longer any personification of the state in the aftermath of the 25 January Revolution. Morsi should be able to see that the revolution has forever demystified the presidency as a formerly sacred institution. Accordingly, his decisions are now subject to popular debate and even rejection. Morsi, or any other future president, is not al-rayes, or “the boss”, as former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser was when he occupied the presidential office. By the same token, Morsi and his association were only late joiners of the January Revolution. They were not behind its origin or escalation, and they were not among the many Egyptians who bravely defied and then ousted the former Mubarak regime. It is important to remember this, since Morsi should always bear in mind that he is just the chief executive of the state as a result. He does not have the credentials that Nasser claimed with regard to the presidential office, and he does not have the legitimacy that would have been his had he and his comrades less reluctantly and lately joined the 25 January Revolution. With the popular approval of the draft constitution behind him, despite all the sins relating to its drafting as well as to the referendum process, Morsi should now start to distance himself from the agenda of his parent association. He should build the presidency as a competent and impartial organisation that can achieve progress in the country. This is the toughest choice that he, and he alone, now has to make. The writer is a political analyst.
