Then, on June 17, moments after the polls closed, the SCAF issued a decree giving it the right to rule until a new parliament was in place, control over the budget and legislation, the right to choose a new Constituent Assembly to write the new constitution, expanded political and economic power, and most importantly total control over Egypt's military and internal policing affairs, including selecting military leaders and having the final say-so on deploying the military and waging war.
Democracy Now!'s Kouddous (June 15) described the June 13-14 decisions as "monumental" and the 16-month transition as "a crisis of legitimacy at every turn":
"We spent three months going to parliamentary elections, and that's just been voided. There's been no reform in the security apparatus. There's been no reform of the media. There's been no reform of the judiciary. So, really, the Mubarak regime is still very much in place. And to top it all off, its last prime minister is now in a runoff against the Muslim Brotherhood, which is really the same political landscape that Egypt has had for many decades now."
Then, in another high-stakes maneuver to shape the post-election terrain, the military refused to announce election results for a full week after the June 17 vote--even though it was clear the next day that the Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi had won. In short, after controlling who could and couldn't be a candidate for office, the military was now fighting to ensure its continued control of the state no matter who got the most votes.
Egyptian activists are increasingly confronting these bitter realities. "When you think about it, the revolutionaries were never in power, so what kind of revolution is it?" one activist now organizing a boycott of the elections told the New York Times. Another summed up, "The system was like a machine with a plastic cover, and what we did was knock off the cover." He had thought if the people "ousted the head of state its body would fall. The roots of the ruling elite were 'much deeper and darker' than they initially understood, he said." ("Revolt Leaders Cite Failure to Uproot Old Order in Egypt," New York Times, June 14, 2012)
Another wrote:
"The army's commanders and the government's key ministers have not changed; the Interior Ministry violates human rights as brazenly as ever; thousands of ordinary Egyptians have been subjected to military trials; and injustices are being perpetrated on Egyptian citizens under a new decree giving the military police and intelligence officials the right to detain civilians." (Sara Khorshid, "The Betrayal of Egypt's Revolution," New York Times, June 18)
The U.S.: Official Silence, Backroom Wheeling & Dealing
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