Mursimania: President Declares State of Emergency and Curfew, invites to Dialog but Refuses to Discuss Constitution.
Christof Lehmann (nsnbc) – On the evening of 27 January 2013, after days of suspense, President Mohammed Mursi issued a decree, declaring emergency law and a curfew in three major cities. Mass protests in major cities throughout Egypt have so far resulted in more than 10 death and more than 700 injured. The protests erupted when celebrations for the second anniversary became an opportunity for the people of Egypt to vent their anger over the fact that what they first perceived as their revolution, had been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party, led by Mohammed Mursi.
The confrontation in Egypt is a confrontation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mursi government, with a broad and informal and in some respects unlikely coalition of supporters of the old Mubarak government, Nasserists, Arab Socialists, Socialist Nationalists, Feminists, Human Rights Activists, Copts and other religious minorities, elements of the Egyptian Military and Security services, intellectuals, and a general coalition of the disenfranchised and impoverished who have a hard time digesting the Mursi governments fascist crackdown on even moderate dissent while the country´s economy continues spiraling downward.
The country was held in suspense for days. Only yesterday evening President Mursi gave a much expected, televised speech in which he addressed the Egyptian people. Mursi stated that he will invite 11 parties, including the al-Dostour Party, the National Salvation Front, NSF, the Freedom and Justice Party, the al-Waft Party and the Strong Egypt Party on Monday 28 January, to initiate a dialog. Mursi also issued the decree that a state of emergency and a curfew be declared in Port Said, Suez and Ismailia, where protesters have torched the headquarter of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Whether Mursi will be successful with his attempt to initiate a national dialog is uncertain. Mursis´s invitation is perceived with skepticism among the opposition and the mass protests continued today in spite of the curfew and emergency law. It is not unlikely that Mursi also will issue a decree to declare emergency law and a curfew in Cairo.
According to Xinghua News Agency, a leading member of Egypts main opposition party, the NSF, who is the vice chairman of the Arab Research Center, stated that the Front would not be joining the national dialog unless it has certainty about that its own topics and that of other participants will be discussed. Shukr said that: “Egyptians are fraught with anger because people´s demands of better living conditions social justice and human dignity have not been met, although years have passed”.
With his statement, Shukr implicitly draws attention to the fact that the people of Egypt have little chance of seeing an improvement in living conditions and social justice any time soon for the very reason that Mohammed Mursi, before he even was elected as President, has signed contracts with the IMF which will literally enslave the people of Egypt for the coming decades. The comparison of Mursi with a Pharaoh is not exactly a far fetched one.
The answer to the question whether the national dialog will resolve the ongoing crisis and the protests, if the opposition parties choose to take part in the talks, the answer is unequivocally “No” unless a continuation of the mass protests aggravates the situation to such a point that the Freedom And Justice Party is forced into changing its condescending position.
With Amr Darrag, a member of the executive bureau of the Muslim Brotherhoods Freedom and Justice Party describing the oppositions persistence on constitutional amendments as a “waste of time” and that “suspending the national dialog over the constitution issue was unrealistic“, it is unlikely that the national dialog even will take place.
With the attitude of Amr Darrag being representative for the Mursi Administrations, and the Islamo-Fascist Muslim Brotherhoods idea of what “dialog” means as long as they have a grib on power, it is most likely that the most weighty arguments for the coming days and possibly weeks are rocks preyed out of pavements, Molotov cocktails, tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and always costly price in terms of lost lives.
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