One columnist reviews Morsi speech, while the other explains why a rebellion is different from a revolution.
Suleiman Shafiq
It is time for the Muslim Brotherhood to leave
Al-Watan Newspaper
Columnist Suleiman Shafiq begins his article with an experience he had on the night of President Mohamed Morsi’s latest speech. “Morsi ended his speech. I took a taxi and headed back home. The humidity is suffocating; the cars pile up as they wait in front of gas stations, blocking the street. The driver asks me: ‘How many speeches are left for the president to leave? Mubarak [left] after four speeches’.”
When Shafiq asked the driver what he thought of Morsi’s speech, the driver pointed to the radio, which was blasting Um Kalthoum’s song “It’s too late”. When Shafiq asked him if he was going to participate, the driver answered: “Who isn’t?”
Shafiq left the taxi and decided to walk home because of the traffic, only to find a group of youths, marching and shouting “leave”. When he asked them where they were heading, they told him, “Tahrir Square” and on the other side there was another group heading to the defence ministry.
When he passed by a coffee house, he found the television switched on Ibrahim Eissa’s talk show, and the waiter telling people to calm down so that they would be able to listen to the analysis of Morsi’s speech. He sat down to have a drink, and overheard people’s comments on the speech. One of them was asking why he was mentioning Copts in the speech, the other answered that Morsi dubbed them as “partners of the homeland”, to which another replied, “He should have said martyrs of the homeland.”
Shafiq states that there have been 60 “martyrs” and 914 injured Copts since the beginning of Morsi’s rule, in addition to 24 church attacks and the forceful displacement of 124 families, of which only 43 returned.
Another patron of the coffee house shouted, “We want to go down on 30 June and for Morsi to leave,” while the coffee shop’s owner wondered if the day of salvation from the Brotherhood had finally come. Shafiq then felt the need to cry.
He then mentions how Morsi had named people in his speech, mimicking the performance of former President Anwar Al-Sadat right before he was murdered. Shafiq says that even the location of Morsi’s speech is symbolic; the covered hall resembles the state of Morsi and the Brotherhood, who are locked in their bubble, refusing to hear anyone outside of it. He explains that the Brotherhood have created their own “reserve,” which protects them and isolates them from the outside world.
He adds that even if the voices of the outside world reach them, they call it a “conspiracy” against Islam and that they are the “pure” ones and the rest are “impure,” which was how Morsi described former regime politician Kamal El-Shazly in his speech. Shafiq writes: “They view themselves in the same way as Zionists, as ‘God’s chosen people’.”
“The hall is covered and air-conditioned, the applause, the chants, the beards…time passes…Morsi only sees his Brotherhood,” Shafiq writes. He adds that Morsi sees all the country’s institutions as part of the conspiracy against him and the Brotherhood. They count all the current crises as “made-up,” blaming the previous regime and particularly Ahmed Shafiq.
He asks: “If [Ahmed] Shafiq is that powerful, where is the power of the Brotherhood, which they always talk about?”
Suleiman Shafiq then explains that he listened to the speech to give Morsi a last chance to redeem himself and found that Morsi only believes his Brotherhood. “El-Sadat [without any comparison], during his last days, was part of the state, saying: ‘my people, my army…’ while Morsi pretends to be part of a revolution, and speaks on behalf of it. He forgets that members of the Brotherhood were never part of the revolution except after it proved to be successful. They forget that they bartered with the late Omar Suleiman and that no member of the Brotherhood was hurt from 25 January 2011 to 1 February 2011, while the rest [of Egyptians], including Copts, were martyred and injured during that period.”
He concludes: “I am sorry, Dr. Mohamed Morsi, you did not give yourself a chance and you singlehandedly overthrew yourself before your people.”
Adel Al-Ansary
Between a revolution and a rebellion
Freedom and Justice Newspaper
“It’s good that the opposition movements that demand the dismissal of President Mohamed Morsi have called themselves ‘Rebellion’, as they are their own witnesses that they are anything but a revolution,” writes Adel Al-Ansary.
He explains that a revolution is usually against a tyrannical regime that “disrupts political life and forges the elections, and continues to block ruling away from any public legitimacy, but a rebellion is against an existing, legitimate regime that did not forge elections or get involved in corruption, but expanded the range of public freedoms”.
He further explains that a revolution gathers mass public support from all social classes, and includes all movements and political parties without exception while a rebellion represents only a section of the people. Al-Ansary claims that during the January revolution, secular, liberal and leftist movements had tried to create a new alliance with the remnants of the old regime instead of forming an alliance with the Islamist movement.
He adds that a true revolution “does not pollute its hands with blood, and does not get involved in killing innocents in their parties’ headquarters and their homes.” Conversely, a rebellion can use weapons such as knives, pellet bullets and molotov cocktails, and trespass on private properties.
While a revolution refuses tyranny and prefers to encourage an active political and democratic life, a rebellion rejects democracy and “works hard to topple a regime that came to power via free public elections.”
He ends the column saying that the problem is that people want to liken a rebellion to a revolution even though the two are completely different.
