Voices
MOHAMED
A. EL-ERIAN
HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
remaining a problem, the sense of
personal insecurity often reached
intolerable levels.
Having waited so long for their
revolution and having fought
so hard for it, the vast majority
of Egyptian citizens was unwilling
to stand by and see the country’s
promising future evaporate
so quickly.
4. WEAK INSTITUTIONAL CHECKS
AND BALANCES, AND LIMITED PRESIDENTIAL APPETITE FOR COURSE
CORRECTION. Mature democracies
have many inbuilt mechanisms for
the timely identification of problems and related changes. Egypt’s
young and incomplete political
transition did not.
The result was the tense impasse
that emerged last week: between
a peaceful grass-root uprising and
a democratically elected president
holding to power despite a notable
erosion in popular support.
As each side felt an enormous
sense of legitimacy, neither was
willing to step back. In fact,
both raised the stakes with their
strong rhetoric.
All this limited the scope for
endogenous course corrections
and national reconciliation. It also
constituted a potentially explo-
sive cocktail, with the frightening
possibility that violent street confrontations could degenerate into
a broader civil conflict.
These four factors placed enormous pressures on the fabric of
society, and they confronted the
country’s friends and allies with
vexing issues. Specifically:
* President Morsi had lost the popular support and legitimacy to rule
competently. Yet he refused to step
down and call early elections.
* Millions of citizens in the street
had lost patience and confidence,
rendering the path to regularlyscheduled elections in three years
quite volatile and hazardous.
A group of
Egyptians
carries the
coffin of a
victim who
died during
overnight
clashes on
July 6.