Ethiopia's weekend announcement that it is diverting the course of the Blue Nile, a preliminary move in the construction of a mega dam that many experts fear will reduce Egypt's share of Nile water, was the beginning of a bad week for President Mohamed Morsi. The issue evolved into a terribly confused situation following the broadcast of a meeting that Morsi hosted at the presidential palace on Monday with a group of Islamist and liberal political figures to discuss the Ethiopian move. Participants used far from diplomatic language about Ethiopia and Sudan, suggesting improper intervention in both countries' affairs, and in the affairs of other Horn of Africa states. That — as a subsequent debate between participants and presidential advisors made clear — they had not realised the whole world was listening in is unlikely to contain the damage done by their derogatory remarks. “We are facing serious political, diplomatic and legal difficulties over this meeting,” said one government official. Hani Raslan, Sudan/Africa expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, says “the possible damage cannot be overestimated.” “Morsi has long argued that he will remedy the harm done to Egyptian-African relations during the last 15 years of Mubarak's rule when Africa was completely neglected. Yet with that single meeting he has caused far more harm than was done throughout Mubarak's rule. Morsi gave an already apprehensive African public proof of Egyptian chauvinism and condescension.” In the assessment of one concerned official statements made during the meeting can only undermine Egypt's negotiating position with Ethiopia. “Before the meeting we had a strong legal basis to say that as a Nile Basin country our rights should not be undermined as a result of irrigation schemes by any other Basin state. International law was on our side. Now we are in a position that could be easily qualified by international law as aggressive. We have a very tough diplomatic mission ahead of us to remedy the damage,” said the diplomat. A court verdict that sentenced 43 human rights activists and NGO employees, 27 of whom were tried in absentia, with one to five years in prison, followed straight after the debacle of the broadcast meeting. Issued on Tuesday, the verdict complicates the already uphill task of the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Geneva as it desperately tries to convince a sceptical UN Human Rights Council that the recently released draft of a new NGO law in Egypt has not been tailored to place civil society in the firm grip of the state. The Geneva delegation's struggle may be nothing compared to that of Morsi who must now face the ire of the one ally — Washington — on whose support and tolerance he desperately counts. Western diplomatic sources in Cairo say that the verdict has acted to confirm existing apprehensions over the draft law released by the presidency on Thursday. Government officials argue the verdict is a legal ruling over which the executive has no influence. Nermine Abdel-Bari, presidential coordinator on human rights affairs, even argued that “fears related to the proposed draft law only exist in the heads of some people while the law itself is designed to offer civil society unprecedented freedom… though with fair and necessary regulations that the state is entitled to have.” It is an argument that lawyer and activist Ahmed Hishmat dismisses as meaningless twaddle. The aim of the draft law, he says, is the complete opposite. Indeed, it is “not just this law but a whole series of presidential decisions that are designed to ensure the executive is in complete control of everything”. For Hishmat it is hard to separate the draft of the NGO law from that of the judiciary law which has already prompted fury from judicial quarters. “Here is what we have today: a president who is counting on the legislation of the Shura Council which was announced unconstitutional by the Supreme Constitutional Court. We have a prosecutor-general whose legitimacy is questioned by the administrative court and draft laws that are firmly resisted by civil society and the judiciary. On top of this we have an antagonised media and a firmly provoked cultural community, we have an ailing economy and a highly polarised political scene. We also have appalling management, as demonstrated by the presidential meeting over the Nile.” All of which leave Hishmat wondering how Morsi can survive the maze of problems that are only going to be compounded on 30 June, the first anniversary of his election likely to be greeted by massive displays of disaffection. Activists have already been busy calling for nationwide demonstrations. The objective is to mark the day on which Morsi was sworn in last year with a massive show of dissatisfaction with his performance and demands for early presidential elections. “Say it out loud, don't be afraid to say it, Morsi is a failure,” shouted Nesrine Hamdi, a volunteer activist with the Tamarod (Rebellion) movement that has been collecting signatures to “withdraw confidence from Morsi” and call for early presidential elections. On Sunday evening she was busy in Heliopolis Square collecting signatures with other activists. Hamdi says she is hopeful that the campaign will be able to collect well over 10 million signatures. She also expects “a really huge demonstration around the presidential palace at Heliopolis to demand an end to the failed administration of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood”. Ragiya Abdel-Wahab, one of the people who signed the Tamarod petition, believes Morsi has already done “enormous damage to this country in his first year”. “We cannot sit around and watch him spend another year as president and cause even greater damage,” she says. A teacher in her early 50s, Abdel-Wahab voted for Hamdeen Sabahi in the first round of presidential elections and abstained in the second round to avoid choosing between “a Muslim Brotherhood candidate and a Mubarak hangover.” She plans to join in demonstrations on 30 June. “I live nearby and our electricity has been off for two hours now. It has been like this for a month and it can only get worse. We are also facing growing inflation. Traffic is impossible. Everything goes from bad to worse. Morsi has to step down.” Amir Salem, a lawyer, is busy trying to convince a court that Morsi escaped Wadi Al-Natron prison days after the outbreak of the 25 January Revolution and, having failed to turn himself in, he was ineligible to run for president. Salem is convinced that he is close to “proving before a court of law that Morsi illegitimately joined the presidential race”. Few of the pundits who join roundtable discussions to discuss Egypt's current dilemmas believe the presidential elections are about to be annulled. Increasingly, though, the argument is being voiced that the current state of affairs is unsustainable. Something has to give. No one knows what it will be. “The hope was that we were going to move from an autocratic state towards a democracy but we have not seen the steps required to achieve this taken,” says political analyst Mohamed Agati. Two and a half years after the 25 January Revolution the nation is back to an official discourse “that one thought was done away with the day Mubarak stepped down on 11 February 2011”. “Today we are back to square one. We have a very polarised political scene and a very confused economic and legal set up. It is uncertain where we can move to from here”.
