Egypt’s Liberals Have a Weak Hand – and They Know It. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 22, 2013.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Mead:
When an
opposition thinks it can win an election, it normally demands early ones. That
opponents of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are angry about the prospect of an
election just a few weeks from now tells us exactly what they think about their
popularity in Egypt.
Many
things are happening in Egypt, not least of which is a general economic
meltdown that threatens to wreck all plans for parliamentary governance. But
one of the key factors shaping the country right now is a disconnect between
Egypt’s elite and its ordinary citizens. The country’s relatively
sophisticated, cosmopolitan, urban, upper middle class wants modern, democratic
government, but the majority of Egyptians are not part of this class and have
different priorities. Historically this was the situation in France in 1848,
and we see it today in places like Thailand. The name “Napoleon” alone won
French rural support for Louis-Napoleon; in Egypt the label “Islam” is good
enough for many voters.
It’s
difficult if not impossible to resolve this kind of division without some kind
of authoritarian rule. Either the urban middle class imposes its agenda on the
countryside or vice versa. It’s not clear yet which will happen in Egypt, but
the opposition’s panicky reaction to new elections does not speak well of their
prospects.
