Egypt: dangerous tricks

Manoeuvring on the eve of the second round of the election has created the risk of fresh confrontations and uncertainties

Editorial
The Guardian, Friday 15 June 2012

"The Egyptian military and security establishment has not been a steady, skilled, or unbiased manager of the political process in the almost year and a half of post revolutionary ups and downs the country has endured. Its manoeuvring on the eve of the second round of voting in the presidential election risks creating fresh confrontations and uncertainties.

Whether or not it is the case, few in Egypt seem to believe that the decisions to dissolve parliament and to give the police and armed forces wide-ranging powers of arrest are unrelated, or that they just happened in the normal course of the supreme constitutional court's deliberations or the defence ministry's planning processes. Coupled with the rigging which marked the first round of voting, and which is unlikely to be abandoned in the second, they point, many say, to a deliberate orchestration. It seems designed not only to ensure a victory for Ahmed Shafiq, the old regime's presidential candidate, but to undercut the power of the Muslim Brotherhood in the other institutions of the state, and to further marginalise the liberal and secular forces which carried so much of the burden of the revolution....."