انقلاب مصر: جزائري أم تركي؟

هل الانقلاب العسكري ضد الأخوان المسلمين في مصر، نسخة عن انقلاب الجيش الجزائري ضد الإسلاميين في الجزائر في أوائل التسعينيات، أم هو طبعة أخرى من إنقلابات عسكر تركيا، الذي أدى في نهاية المطاف إلى ترويض الإسلاميين داخل قفص النظام العلماني، وجعل حزب العدالة والتنمية الحاكم حالياً إسلامياً بالأسم فقط؟

بكلمات أوضح: هل قرار المحكمة الدستورية العليا بحل مجلس الشعب الذي يسيطر عليه الإسلاميون والسماح لأحمد شفيق بخوض انتخابات الرئاسة، بداية لأزمة كبرى جديدة في مصر أم نهاية سريعة لمرحلة الصعود الجامح لجماعة الإخوان، التي ارتكبت خلال سنة واحدة سلّة أخطاء قاتلة شجعت في النهاية المجلس العسكري على الاقدام على هذه الخطوة؟

كاتب هذه السطور يميل إلى وجهة النظر الثانية، أي أن ماجرى ويجري في مصر هو ترويض للأخوان على النمط التركي، ربما بدعم من الولايات المتحدة، وليس ثورة مضادة.

لكن رولا خلف في "فايناننشال تايمز" ترى غير ذلك. ما رأيكم أنتم؟

أدناه مقال خلف، وقد اوردنا نصه لأن "فايناننشال تايمز" تحتاج إلى اشتراك مالي:

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Egypt bombshell has echoes of Algeria

By Roula Khalaf in London

Egypt’s political transition has been dogged by unexpected twists and turns but nothing comes close to the bombshell delivered on Thursday by the constitutional court. Two days before the first democratic presidential elections, and amid an increasingly polarised political scene, the court ordered the recently elected parliament dissolved, saying it was unconstitutional.

For many Egyptians – not least the Muslim Brotherhood, which won the biggest share of seats in the legislature – the decision by a court packed with appointees from the ousted political order was seen as the most damaging move in a well-planned counter-revolution, engineered by the ruling military and remnants of the old regime.

Across the Arab world, it will revive memories of Algeria in 1991, when the army cancelled a second round of elections to derail a victory by an Islamist party, plunging the country into a decade-long civil war.

It is perhaps too early to judge how the constitutional decision came about and the exact role played by the military but few analysts were convinced that it was not politically influenced. The ruling has certainly thrown the country’s transition into disarray, casting a shadow over an election that pits Ahmed Shafiq, a remnant of the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak, against Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate.

“This is an opening scene in what is certain to be a drama,” says Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think-tank. ”It’s hard to imagine how this can pass quietly.”

“It’s the worst possible outcome imaginable – what we saw today is a soft coup or maybe a coup,” says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Centre think-tank. “It makes me feel that we underestimated the SCAF [the supreme council of the armed forces which took over after the fall of Hosni Mubarak]. This was masterfully played and it took everyone by surprise.”

The constitutional court decision confirms the worst fears of the Muslim Brotherhood. Since its parliamentary victory six months ago, Egypt’s oldest and most organised political group suspected that the military was on a campaign to undermine it. It feared the same repression suffered under previous regimes.

It was this anxiety that drove the Brotherhood to renege on its promise not to field a presidential candidate, at the cost of undermining its credibility.

Mr Morsi lashed out at the remnants of the “corrupt regime” on Thursday though he said he would still fight the election. But as the Brotherhood’s leadership met on Thursday to plan its next moves, some officials admitted the military had trapped them.

“The military knows that we have a red line and we’re never going to take this [crisis] towards bloodshed. And they know that people on the streets have lost faith in the revolution,” one Brotherhood official said.

Indeed, Egypt’s generals might have been encouraged by popular sentiment, which seemed overwhelming sympathetic to Islamist parties last year but has been gradually shifting, with many Egyptians disappointed by parliament and, above all, desperate for a restoration of security and stability. The Brotherhood’s relations with non-Islamist groups have also suffered, amid repeated squabbles over the composition of the panel that will write the new constitution.

The generals therefore probably calculated that new parliamentary elections would hand the Brotherhood a much smaller share than the 47 per cent achieved last time and with old regime supporters regrouping and winning a sizeable share of the legislature, in what Mr Hamid says would be a gradual “restoration of the old regime”.

As condemnation of the court decisions poured in from Islamists and others, a Brotherhood official said he feared the presidential election had been decided.

“All the dots point in one direction – that Shafiq will be president regardless of the vote,” he said.

So tumultuous has Egypt’s transition been, however, that with two days left for the presidential vote, a lot could still change. “I’ve been surprised every day by Egypt,” says Mr Alterman.