No, it is not an editorial typo. It actually seems that President Mohamed Morsy has stumbled upon Mubarak’s governance manual somewhere in the presidential palace and found it interesting to follow. Why not? We should not forget that Mubarak had successfully managed to run an oppressed nation for thirty years and made them cheer for him.
There should be some lessons-learned here or there in his manual for Morsy to learn.
Unluckily for Morsy, his glorious Mubarak-style speech in the stadium among his fellow brothers came only three days before the first anniversary of Maspero’s massacre on 9 October. He should have foreseen harsh criticism coming. At least his advisors or those who write his speeches should have expected the same.
There is a list of things that President Morsy has done, or actually has not done that make him resemble Mubarak’s spirit by the day. He behaves as if he was the leader of the revolution, or as if the people voted for him with the belief that he is the natural closure of a revolution that has cost hundreds of lives, thousands of disappearances, and thousands of sight ability losses.
Didn’t Mubarak as well believe that he was the leader of October War?
It seems like President Morsy has forgotten that most people have voted for him with the motive of fearing that Shafiq would win.
Given Morsy’s Tahrir speech and his connection with the people in the square starting his presidential term, we all thought: why not giving the man a chance? However, this chance now seems to be diminishing day by day the more our president turns the pages in Mubarak’s manual on how to rule Egypt.
As a first question to President Morsy out of a long list: what happened with the Maspero massacre? Why don’t we have a proper trial, where leaders of the military (not the poor soldiers) are in court? Why is the state/Mubarak’s TV not on trial for calling on “the honourable citizens” to defend the army from the Copts? Isn’t this considered calling for sectarian violence live and on air?
Second, are we ruled by a single person that the people have voted for, or an unregistered intransparent group led by a guide that we cannot reach or judge? Why is the Brotherhood business tycoon Khairat El-Shater out everywhere negotiating economic deals for Egypt with foreign officials, when he does not represent any official entity?
Thirdly, why didn’t Morsy meet his promises made before the final round of presidential elections to all political groups to mobilise the people for him against Shafiq? Families’ of those who lost their lives in the revolution are not properly taken care of. Those who were injured are begging for treatment, except for a well presented few in the state-run media. The constituent assembly is still the same one vaguely constructed before presidential elections.
Actually, the first impression a person would create about Morsy’s 100-day speech, which happened to be on the occasion of a war victory, is that it does not represent a big difference in the mentality used addressing the people during Mubarak’s era.
Even those who attended the event in the stadium were largely from the Brotherhood, who were cheering all the time for “the leader.” Doesn’t this remind us of the National Democratic Party that used to mobilise members to cheer for Mubarak?
This does not mean that President Morsy is another copy of Mubarak, but sadly he does not have a different vision for the country. He is using the same tools and even almost the same people.
We have ministers from the old regime, security generals responsible for torturing Egyptians under Mubarak “securing” the country, the same pro-rich policies ignoring the poor’s demands and same intransparency in taking even the simplest economic decisions.
Unfortunately, it seems that the daily Brotherhood newspaper Freedom and Justice was right when they congratulated President Morsy in June upon victory in elections and gave him the name Mohamed Hosni Mubarak as an editorial typo. Now it makes perfect sense.
