Historically, one of the most salient features of the Egyptian state has been that it is a centralised one. Attempts to break the hold of the central state have never succeeded. True, this state has suffered moments of weakness and frailty, which gave rise to such attempts. At other moments, the country or parts of the country fell under foreign occupation, as occurred at the end of the Pharaonic era, during the Coptic era, and up to the British occupation of the whole country followed by the Israeli occupation of Sinai. Still, as a general rule, a strong central state asserted its hegemony over the whole of Egyptian territory while frailty and weakness were the exception. Perhaps the most recent example of the latter is the condition that set in during the late Mubarak era due to rampant corruption and injustice, the hereditary succession scenario and the deteriorating relationship between the institutions of government, most notably between the army and the police. As a result, the regime fell and the institutions of state teetered. Unfortunately, the performance of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), headed by General Hussein Tantawi, further weakened the state after it assumed the reins of government. The clearest indication of this is how SCAF caved in to the pressures of the Muslim Brotherhood and its threats to precipitate another “Algeria”. Thus, power was handed to the Brotherhood's supreme guide via the announcement of the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohamed Morsi, as the victor in the closely contested presidential race. The year of the Morsi incumbency was characterised by a systematic bid to debilitate and dismantle the state. Operating in the service of the project of his group and its international organisation, Morsi did all in his power to undermine the foundations of the Egyptian national patriotic entity and its institutions. In particular, he sought to sap the energies of the armed forces and erode national sovereignty over the northern Sinai by opening Egypt's borders to thousands of terrorists from the world over, and facilitating the influx of huge quantities of light and heavy weaponry, which was amassed by groups and militias formed by those elements that had infiltrated into Sinai from abroad. As part of their scheme to destroy the state, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood targeted the police, which they hoped to infiltrate by purchasing some officers, reaching understandings with others, and enrolling a large number of Muslim Brotherhood youth in the Police Academy to ensure Brotherhood control over the police agencies in the future. Then they set their crosshairs on the judiciary, whose more senior members they planned to eliminate so as to clear the way for judges loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood (the group that called itself “Judges for Egypt”) and the rise of its sleeping cells within the judicial establishment. After all, this was one of the purposes for which the 2012 constitution was tailored. Naturally, the Muslim Brotherhood was thirsting for the chance to assert its control over the military establishment. For this purpose, they turned to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey for its expertise in clipping the wings of the army and forcing it into submission. Erdogan's men did indeed come to Cairo to help the Muslim Brothers repeat the Turkish experience, which they had planned to put into effect after 30 June, which they had imagined would come and go like any ordinary day. But it did not. Unprecedented millions took to the streets on 30 June to protest Muslim Brotherhood rule and they sustained their marches in millions for several days. On 3 July, the army once again sided with the people, setting into motion the process of reclaiming the Egyptian state. That Egyptians responded in equal if not greater millions to General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi's appeal to them to march again 26 July was a clear sign that the people wanted their state back. This, indeed, began to happen. The army and police worked together to reassert control over the country and to repair the damage caused by the Muslim Brotherhood's assault on the state. Although Egyptian authorities quickly succeeded in re-imposing the hegemony of the state, there remained several terrorist hotspots. The most serious was the northern Sinai, which under Morsi had become home to international terrorist groups. Here, the army was forced to engage in a fierce and protracted battle that will soon culminate in the total defeat of those terrorist groups. Delga village was a second trouble area. Muslim Brotherhood supporters had taken over the village, set up roadblocks at its entrances and maltreated its Coptic inhabitants. Soon, however, a joint army and police force succeeded in ending that occupation and regaining control over the village. The third hotbed was the town of Kerdasa, to which hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters fled after the dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nahda Square sit-ins. There, too, the extremists seized control, isolated it from the rest of the Giza governorate and inflicted injustices against its inhabitants. Their brutal torture, massacre and desecration of the corpses of officers and soldiers of the Kerdasa police department horrified the nation. Last week, security forces set into motion the operation to re-establish state control over that town famed for its unique weavings, drawing the curtain down on the Muslim Brotherhood's adventures in the Nile Valley and the Delta. Then, once the army re-establishes full control over northern Sinai, restoring this territory, too, to the national embrace, the Egyptian state will have once again reasserted its hegemony over the whole national territory. This brings us to a more important question, which concerns what Egypt will be looking for in its next president. Egypt needs a president with special qualities that are suited to a country that has experienced two revolutions within less than 30 months. He will have to be capable of handling the country's many complex and mounting problems while managing foreign policy in intricate and turbulent regional and international environments. He must have the qualities it takes to lead the country and its people through this extremely delicate phase until Egypt fully recuperates and stands on firm institutional feet again. This could take at least eight years (two presidential terms), which will be the time it takes to build robust political parties and for the generation of the political centre to have matured enough (in age) to assume leadership. This generation — the younger generation — is Egypt's hope. However, it has not yet had the opportunity to work with the institutions of the state. These institutions, for their part, have not yet had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with and come to trust in this generation. The chief reason for this is that for many decades the regime relied primarily on elites that hailed from the military establishment or civilian circles closely connected with it. The ruling elite clung to power until decrepitude, narrowing the process of injecting new blood, which was further restricted to relatives and others in those small circles that could be trusted. This naturally excluded the bulk of the rising generations, together with their skills and talents. Eventually that regime became so old and set in its ways that it could no longer accommodate to contemporary changes and it crumbled, together with its circles of intimates and its project of hereditary succession. Tantawi, who took over after the revolution, was afflicted by the same ailments, namely old age and rigidity, and as the result of his mismanagement of the post-25 January interim phase, the country was handed to the Muslim Brotherhood on a silver platter. The presidential elections in June 2012 cast into relief the sins of the Mubarak regime. The array of candidates at the time epitomised Egypt's real crisis. Some seemed to come from another time and place, crowing slogans from a long gone era. As a whole, they had no experience in the management of the affairs of nations, no expertise in handling the many domestic issues, and even less know-how when it came to the foreign policy of a regional power such as Egypt. They were even unfamiliar with the regional and international treaties and conventions that Egypt has signed and, hence, had no clear idea of Egypt's international rights and obligations. Merely to listen to some of those candidates made one realise the magnitude of the Mubarak regime's crime of monopolising power, decision-making power and the design and conduct of policy for so long. Opposition politicians lacked the minimum level of knowledge regarding the Egyptian state and the affairs of state. As fate would have it, the first round of the presidential elections left voters once again facing the larger circle of the Mubarak regime. The contenders in the run-offs were General Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister of the Mubarak era, and Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood that had reached a special accommodation with that regime in its capacity as the largest opposition bloc. While the regime used this group as a bogeyman to frighten the West and perpetuate its own power, its security agencies struck deals with it in accordance with which the Muslim Brotherhood would be guaranteed a certain share of People's Assembly seats in certain voting districts in advance of parliamentary elections. It was a stable and generally comfortable relationship that would only become strained when either of the two sides tried to overstep the mutually accepted bounds. If, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood thirsted for a bigger slice of the pie of power or began to drool over certain offices, the regime would slap it back into place. Conversely, when the regime broke its word, as occurred in the legislative elections of 2010 when the National Democratic Party reneged on its commitment to the agreed upon quota of seats reserved for Brotherhood candidates, the Muslim Brotherhood moved to boycott subsequent rounds of the polls. For the most part, however, the two sides adhered to their parts of the bargain, which helps account for why the Muslim Brotherhood did not take part in the demonstrations of 25 January 2011 and only jumped aboard the revolution when it became sure that the regime would collapse. Thus, two candidates from the old regime faced off in the first presidential elections after the 25 January Revolution. Then the year of experience with the victor — Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood — showed that neither this president nor the group he hailed from had what it takes to manage government institutions, conduct foreign affairs and, in short, run a country. It was a grim year for the Egyptian people, filled with worsening problems and charged with mounting tensions, and it drove them to revolt again, bringing them to a new interim phase in which we hope we will not reproduce the mistakes we made the first time around. The starting point for avoiding the mistakes of the previous interim period is for all civil political forces to agree on a single presidential candidate. This candidate should possess the qualities of a true statesman and should come from outside the core of the old establishment. Nevertheless, he should be sufficiently familiar with the institutions of the state and they with him so that they can work together constructively in a spirit of trust and confidence. Once the civil political forces agree on such a candidate, they should set to work to strengthen their political parties and contribute as energetically as possible to securing the cornerstones of a truly democratic order, one founded on the principles of citizenship, full equality and the rule of law. This can be achieved through parliament work and the acquisition of the necessary know-how and expertise it takes to run a country of the size and stature of Egypt.
The writer is an analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. He is also head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and a former MP.
