“Morsi is not my president nor is Al-Sisi”. This was the defining line that blogger and political activist Ahmed Samir put as a Facebook status on Sunday — the eve of the first session of the trial of the ousted president that opened on Monday, four months after he was removed from office. The status of Samir reflected the overwhelming polarisation that has haunted Egypt since the presidential elections of last year when the competition was strictly put in black and white: Ahmed Shafik, a military man with a close association to the Hosni Mubarak regime toppled by the revolution, and Mohamed Morsi, representing Mubarak's most resilient, and indeed most persecuted, political foe: the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a polarisation that was accentuated under the rule of Morsi who made no secret of his bias towards his supporters and whose adversaries, including some from within the heart of the regime, who made no secret of their plan to defy him all the way. On 30 June this polarisation was temporarily reduced as revolutionaries and ancient regime followers, never truly united, were joined in a call for early presidential elections. Three days later, while the military intervened to force Morsi to bow to the will of the nation and ousted him after he declined to call for early presidential elections, divisions reappeared. Those at the heart of the revolutionary group expressed apprehension about the roadmap which put the presidential elections, demanded by the masses, at the tail of the process announced in the presence of one of their then widely popular faces Mohamed Al-Baradei. The division was fully re-instated with the demonstrations of 26 July held upon the appeal of the head of defence, who actually negotiated with Morsi to get him to bow to early presidential elections and then removed him. Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi then demanded the “authorisation of the people for police and army to fight terror”. The fact that this authorisation was later used to disperse the five-week long sit-ins of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Morsi supporters, in Cairo and Giza, in a very bloody scene, brought back the polarisation of the summer of 2012 — in a more accentuated rhythm with many of those who joined the 30 June demonstrations making the most un-revolutionary demand, from the perspective of the 25 January revolutionary forces: to have Al-Sisi as president. This week, hours after the world saw Morsi in the first session of his trial for ordering the killing of innocent demonstrators — the same charges with which his predecessor Mubarak had been indicted — Abdallah Al-Senawi, leftist writer and considered close to the military after Morsi's ouster, broke the news: Al-Sisi is fast losing reluctance to join the presidential race — where he is unlikely to find any serious competition with all former presidential runners keeping silent. For Mohamed Othman, a member of the Higher Committee of the Strong Egypt Party, it is most ironic that the only man who had announced his intention to run before he was somehow silenced is yet another military general, Sami Anan. Like Al-Sisi himself, Anan served under Mubarak. Al-Sisi was head of the military intelligence and number two in command. Unlike Al-Sisi, Anan was not trusted by Morsi. The ousted president had, six weeks after being sworn in on 30 June 2012, removed the head of defence Hussein Tantawi and Anan and made Al-Sisi minister of defence. The only other name that has been carefully thrown up, especially after the overture of Anan, is Shafik himself who was acquitted this week by a court of law of corruption charges and whose stay in the United Arab Emirates, a firm supporter of the post-Morsi regime, has extended beyond the rule of the ousted president. “So effectively today we are talking about three generals of the Mubarak regime. We are not just talking about members of the Mubarak regime but military members,” said Othman. “We are in fact talking about the otherwise obvious heir of the Mubarak regime had he not been removed by the force of the 25 January Revolution,” said Othman who had campaigned in the first round of last year's presidential elections for Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fottouh, an expelled Muslim Brotherhood figure. Othman himself, like Samir, is a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who voted for Morsi to spare the country the fate of the rule of Shafik but demonstrated against him following the announcement of the extra-judiciary constitutional declaration of 22 November 2013 until 30 June. For Othman, as with Samir, the rule of Morsi failed essentially because it failed to bow to the demands of the masses that joined the 25 January Revolution aspiring for democracy. “The Muslim Brotherhood did not want to change the regime of Mubarak as demanded by the 25 January Revolution; they just wanted to be the heirs of the Mubarak regime — with all its oppression apparatus. They just wanted to be where Mubarak and his men were. This is why we turned against Morsi as we did against Mubarak,” said Khaled Abdel-Hamid, a leftist who also voted for the sequence of Abul-Fottouh, then Morsi. The three men argue that what Egypt needs today is to move beyond the cycle of the Mubarak regime and its foes because at the end of the day the Muslim Brotherhood, when all is said and done, proved to be part of the Mubarak regime. “What we need is someone who can be accepted by all, or let us say, most of those who joined the 30 June demonstrations, someone who would not try as Morsi did to replicate the Mubarak regime but who could successfully find an in-road within the state bureaucracy as within the revolutionary forces,” said Othman. He promptly added, “But this would not be Al-Sisi. A military man of the Mubarak regime would not do.” Al-Sisi as president, Abdel-Hamid said, would be “a setback in every sense of the word — a military man from the Mubarak regime. This is way beyond what anyone can accommodate.” For Abdel-Hamid discussing names of the potential next president is the wrong start. The right start, he said, is to discuss the parameters. “It should be someone who would fit the call of justice. How would Al-Sisi fit this criterion?” For Wael Khalil, another leftist who voted for Abul-Fotouh and then Morsi, the issue is even more complex. “If we have the Mubarak regime as intact as it is today, and it had proven to be intact all the way through, then it makes very little difference who would sit on the president's seat because at the end of the day he would be either from within the regime or he would have to do as Morsi did — fail to honour the revolutionary demands”. For Khalil, the challenge today is not to defy the scheme of those who want Al-Sisi to run “as we did when we defied those who promoted the succession of Gamal Mubarak” but to provide the right alternative, especially that Al-Sisi “is not someone who seems to be offering the nation with a vision for the future”. His only claim to fame is to have moved to remove Morsi after the ousted president had been widely decried “and a few cheesy statements about affectionate love of Egypt and its people”. “This is all well and good, but it is more of the theories who made this country bankrupt. Enough of this, enough,” said Hussein as he tried to stretch his neck and back from a long session of fixing old clothes. Speaking from his small workshop in Midan Al-Gamaa in the commercial heart of Heliopolis, Hussein said that he is “sick and tired of all the slogans”. Hussein is particularly angry with the Muslim Brotherhood slogans that were made this week by Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators shouting “Morsi is the legitimate president”. “When I saw [Morsi] on TV [during the trial] saying that he is the ‘legitimate president' I really thought that this man is out of touch. What legitimacy? Was he elected to make the country bankrupt? Do his followers know how difficult things had become during the black year in which he ran the country?” Hussein wants Al-Sisi to be president. “Yes for sure”, said the man who voted Shafik for rounds one and two of the 2012 presidential elections. “This country is in a mess. It needs a strong man and a strong man has to be from within the army.” For Hussein, Shafik is not good enough anymore. “He is not as strong as Al-Sisi. He did not know how to play the game. He fought the wrong way. He is like our football players. He cannot win but Al-Sisi is like the players of Barcelona — he plays and he scores. This is the kind of president Egypt needs. Enough with rhetoric.” Hussein's argument is a reflection of an overwhelming public mood, even by the count of Western capitals which have been openly apprehensive about the ouster of Morsi. According to one, “we don't question the fact that if he runs he would be fairly elected with a considerable majority.” The popularity of Al-Sisi is unequalled and uncontested even by the reckoning of former presidential non-Islamist candidates, including the activist Hamdeen Sabahi At the end of the day, the Islamists and the revolutionaries do not seem to be in the majority but they are not either in the extreme minority that could be easily put aside.
