Crisis in Egypt - More worrying than ever

A sense of foreboding is rising across an increasingly troubled land

IT IS an odd thing when a nation of 84m people lumbers towards a precise appointment with a wholly unknown destiny. But such is the case with Egypt. The fatal date is June 30th, the first anniversary of Muhammad Morsi’s inauguration as Egypt’s first freely elected president. The event is a planned nationwide protest, calling for Mr Morsi to go, in the manner of Egypt’s dictator of 30 years, Hosni Mubarak, only 30 turbulent months ago.

No one knows if the protests will succeed, nor what might happen if they do. What is sure is that they will be big and very possibly bloody. The country is polarised, the mood highly charged. Already skirmishes in provincial cities between friends and foes of Mr Morsi’s party, a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, have left a handful of dead and scores of injured.

Many expect clashes to worsen and spread before a showdown on June 30th. The army has already deployed across the country to secure key installations and has reinforced the gates of Mr Morsi’s palace with concrete barriers. Worried citizens are stockpiling necessities, with a panicked run on petrol causing mile-long queues and snarled traffic. Embassies caution their citizens to avoid likely trouble spots.

With a mix of error and mischance, Mr Morsi has managed to anger every tier of Egypt’s class-ridden society. For those concerned mostly with money, whether rich or poor, his government’s glaring failure to stem a dire economic slide counts most. Inflation, unemployment, government debt and poverty have all swollen markedly during Mr Morsi’s short tenure. Shortages of fuel and power are now chronic.

For those concerned more with politics, whether from an Islamist or secular point of view, the Muslim Brotherhood’s secretive and bullying style has proved deeply frustrating. Many on the religious right accuse Mr Morsi of using religion simply to secure power, not to make Egypt more Islamic. Non-Islamists accuse the Brothers of attempting a creeping takeover of state institutions, as well as of rank incompetence. “It’s not a question of whether they are Muslim Brothers or liberals,” wrote Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent opposition figurehead, in a recent scathing article. “They are simply not qualified to govern.”

A large proportion of Egyptians who voted for Mr Morsi last year, giving him his slim 51% majority, have now turned their back on him. Many of those who would never vote for him have worked all along to undermine the Brothers. These include stalwarts of the “deep state”, the opaque, Mubarak-era civil service and security apparatus that spent decades oppressing Islamists. Powerful businessmen who profited under Mr Mubarak also bear grudges, relentlessly reflected in the privately owned media that far outshine the Islamists’ dowdy efforts at propaganda.

The increasingly nasty war of words between Egypt’s camps has turned politics into what Khalil Anani, an analyst, describes as a zero-sum game. The Brotherhood and its allies believe they are facing a conspiracy to reinstate the dictatorship that long oppressed them. Their enemies feel that if they do not stop the Islamists now, Egypt will lose any chance of being an open, modern, pluralist society.

All this might have been averted if Mr Morsi had treated his opponents more respectfully at an earlier stage. But the insincerity of his gestures towards secular parties, which often—to be fair to him—seemed like a disorganised rabble, rendered meaningful reconciliation unlikely. Yet instead of offering compromise, Mr Morsi abused his electoral legitimacy to enact a host of controversial laws and appointments.

As resistance to him has made the country increasingly ungovernable, eyes have naturally turned to Egypt’s armed forces, which underpinned Mr Mubarak’s regime and stepped in to fill the vacuum when he fell. In a closely scrutinised speech on June 24th, the defence minister, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, issued a veiled warning that the army would not stand by while the country slid into chaos. He gave the sparring factions six days to settle their differences. Some in the deep state may wish to see this as a green light for the army’s intervention.