As someone who has lived through some of the recent events in the history of Egypt I suppose that I am qualified to offer my thoughts on how things have ended up so badly.
Let me start off by saying that I love Egypt and its people and have done so for many years and I recognise the many qualities of a remarkable people. Sadly for the current situation one quality lacking is the ability for calm, dispassionate debate. Feelings run high in Egypt and the people are passionate and at times this means that people appear unwilling/unable to compromise for the common good.
When Mr. Morsi came to power it was on a wave of optimism that the first democratically elected president would unite the country but sadly, instead of setting about tackling some of the huge socioeconomic problems facing the country he embarked upon a series of moves designed to protect and enlarge his power base ensuring that the brotherhood would remain in power. To a certain extent this might have been tolerated if it were not for a whole host of blunders and u turns which did nothing to help an economy in crisis and a population where many people were starting to worry about where the next meal was coming from. People might have even stomached all of this on the basis that he was new to the job but there was never a sense of humility, of compromise from him or his supporters. When you have violence in the streets trying to hold it back in the style of kind Canute by repeating the mantra “we are the democratically elected government” was never going to be of much use. People who had shed blood to rid themselves of one dictator where not going to be thrilled at the further bloodshed and when on a daily basis you heard people saying “it was better under Mubarak” you knew that the end was nigh.
I personally am sad about how things have ended up and am worried that the new regime seems intent on polarising the population instead of reconciling them (arresting leading members of the brotherhood is not going to persuade that organisation to come to the table and be part of the solution) and reaching out to them.
It’s early days for the regime and I am hopeful that things will improve. I hope so because I met many wonderful people in Egypt who want nothing more than to be safe and to be able to feed their families and I personally don’t think that this is too much for anyone to ask.
random outpourings 