Egypt has no constitution, parliament... or control

Morsi's victory has done nothing to calm fears among Egyptians – or to rein in the army

By Robert Fisk

".....I'd like to say that Morsi's placatory speech on Sunday – CNN and the BBC made much of his all-inclusive message because it fits in with the Western narrative on the Middle East (progressive, non-sectarian, etc) – was a pretty measly effort in which the army got as much praise as the police for Egypt's latest stage of revolution.

Put bluntly, Morsi is going to be clanking down the road to Egyptian democracy with tin cans dangling from his feet, fear and suspicion mingling among the old Mubarakites and the business elite, and, of course, the Christians, while the uniformed bulldogs of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces – its acronym, SCAF, is somehow appropriate to its inefficiency – go on biting off the powers that any president of Egypt should hold. He's got no constitution, no parliament and no right to command his own country's army.

Morsi's friendly tone towards Iran yesterday, of course, will enrage the same beasts. The Saudis allegedly poured money into the Muslim Brotherhood campaign and now they find Morsi smiling upon the Shia regime they so much detest and suggesting they resume "normal relations".....

For as the army has shut down the parliament, taken over budgets, produced an interim constitution taking away most of Morsi's power and reintroduced martial law – not to forget the dishonouring of its own promise to stand down after presidential elections – so a strange but not unfamiliar phenomenon has reappeared in Egypt: fear of the foreigner....

For the "real" revolutionaries, the young of last year's rebellion against Mubarak, are going to have to connect with the poor of Egypt who voted for Morsi, and abandon many of their slogans. It was the Tunisian leftist Habib Ayeb who told an Egyptian journalist last week that those who called his country's uprising the "Jasmine Revolution" failed to realise that the original Tunisian revolutionaries of Sidi Bouzid had probably never seen jasmine in their lives. And there are many Egyptians today who believe they never saw an "Arab Spring"."