Blame Morsy. Any western ruler in his toes would have resigned at first 5 million ppl on streets.

Morsy’s 369 days in power were typified by a lack of reform, which alienated activists and reformists; a lack of reconciliation, which blocked any potential outreach to members of the former regime; and narrow, monopolistic governance, which alienated all political forces — including his erstwhile Islamist allies, particularly the al-Nour Party, which abandoned Morsy during his final hours. This reckless approach to power spurred alienation, paralyzed governance, and resulted in repression and discontent — and opposition grew.

The bill of particulars is damning and dates back to the immediate post-Mubarak period, when the Brotherhood chose to pursue a formalistic procedural transition that saw elections alone as democracy, while ignoring substantive reform of a failing system. The narrow window for confronting Mubarak’s police state and crony capitalism would have required a modicum of solidarity among the forces that propelled the uprising against Mubarak. But in the first of a series of betrayals, the Muslim Brotherhood set out on a course to retool Mubarak’s authoritarian state and co-opt its tools of repression, with the Brotherhood itself in the helm.

Not only did the Muslim Brotherhood help craft and endorse the interim military ruler’s flawed transitional road map, which was filled with gaps and omissions, but the Brotherhood immediately set about stigmatizing its opponents on the basis of crude religious and sectarian demagoguery. Reformist and activist forces who sought to challenge the emerging political order were tarred and treated as obstacles in the Brotherhood’s pursuit of factional gain. Hence was set in motion a substance-free transition whose sole defining feature was a grueling series of elections.

via Blame Morsy

 By Michael Wahid Hanna

 Foreign Policy.