On Saturday, seven members of the Islamic group ‘Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’ in Suez, Egypt, decided to promote virtue by trying to whip a woman on the street due to her “un-Islamic” dress. The woman took off her shoe and beat one of them with it while yelling at them, which caught the attention of random bystanders, who joined in the fun and gave the Vice preventers the beating of their lives. It is important to note that in the 2011 parliamentary elections, all of Suez’s parliamentary seats, except one, were taken by Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood candidates.
On Sunday, in the small village of Samanod in Gharbeya, residents beat two men accused of stealing a motorised rickshaw and attempting to kidnap a girl in it, and then hung them by their feet while some in a watching crowd chanted “Kill them!” Afterwards, residents took the bodies and dumped them on the doorstep of a nearby police station, which announced that both men had died.
In Sharqeya, a mob of townspeople stormed a police station in Belbeis, where they held the police hostage while they beat up a driver who had got into a collision with a car earlier that day that led to the death of their relative. That same day, in Monofeya, a driver killed a known thug who tried to shake him down for protection money.
In Cairo, for two consecutive days, clashes erupted in Moqattam in front of the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters, after members of the MB Youth attacked a number of graffiti artists, including women. The Ministry of Interior, who apparently had no presence in any of the aforementioned governorates, suddenly had hundreds of police officers and soldiers running after the protesters in the street.
It is worth noting that the Muslim Brotherhood has, until now, no legal entity, and according to the law, the headquarters should be shut down and investigated. Thankfully, both the Minister of Interior and the Attorney General are Muslim Brotherhood loyalists, so we won’t have to worry about the rule of law at all in Morsi’s Egypt.
Speaking of our brave and elected leader, two days ago he visited the governorate of Sohag in Upper Egypt, one of his bases of support and power, in an attempt to show that he is still popular in the country. When the people of Sohag found out he was in town, they stormed the stadium where he was planning to have his event, and tore it apart trying to catch him.
He escaped the governorate, which can now be added to Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said, Ismalia, Gharbeya and his native Sharqeya, as another governorate he can’t step foot in without risking being torn limb from limb. Morsi confronted the crisis the way he always does, by leaving the country and heading to India on a business trip.
No one knows if he intends to stop in Pakistan to accept his newly awarded honorary PhD in philosophy, which he probably received due to his deep philosophical musings on how world politics are like a bowl of spaghetti and his public meditation on how to be ”versus” something “but not against it”.
As he departs, the IMF arrives, negotiating giving Egypt a bridging loan, until they can give Egypt the actual $4.8bn loan, which they insist will only happen once the government implements its financial reforms and elects a new parliament to approve it. Morsi’s government countered privately that if they implement the reforms before the election, there is no way they will win the majority needed to approve the loan, and that the IMF should just trust them, give them the money and shut the hell up, which, weirdly enough, is not yielding results.
Their desperation is understandable, especially given that the summer is rolling in and the country is completely without dollars, which will severely challenge the government’s ability to purchase fuel for both vehicular consumption and the national power grid. Rolling blackouts are expected to dominate a very hot summer, only made hotter by no-longer subsidised fuel that will not only be super expensive, but will also be unavailable and scarce.
Given the anticipated hyper-inflation of the pound, coupled with the economic stagnation caused by the fantastic efforts of the Qandil government to completely bankrupt the country, we can all look forward to a truly hellish summer on all fronts.
Returning to elections, attempts to overturn the ruling to postpone them have been denied by the courts, and the Shura Council is yet to finish a new law. Further complicating the issue is the fact that even if they do finish the law tomorrow, they will not be able to have elections before September, because Ramadan will most definitely interrupt the 3rd or 4th phase on the elections.
Given that they can’t simply freeze the elections during Ramadan, since it will gave the later phase candidates an unfair advantage over the earlier phase candidates, which can then be used to challenge the entire election and its law in court, the only logical thing would be to wait until Ramadan and Eid are both over and then call for elections, which means the call won’t be before September and the election itself not before October.
Speaking of October, it is also worth reminding you, dear reader, that the revolutionary forces have a special name for the month, and it is the 2nd anniversary of the Maspero massacre. Actually, October, November, December, January and February all have new names designated by anniversaries of revolutionary massacres, which are Maspero, Mohamed Mahmoud, Egyptian Cabinet, Jan 25 and the Port Said massacre. Yes, the five revolutionary months of the year when things heat up all over again, also known as winter, also known as the revolutionary season.
Now imagine how that winter will be like after the summer that we are expecting, with the country in the state it is, and ask yourself one question: If this is the Muslim Brotherhood’s idea of a renaissance, well, what exactly is their idea of the dark ages?
