More violence in Egypt

On Tuesday another nine people died and dozens more were injured in Cairo and other parts of Egypt, in new confrontations between partisans and adversaries of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi. This adds up to a toll of more than 100 dead due to political violence since the military coup that earlier this month overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood. Added to the victims in the cities are others killed in Islamist attacks on the security forces deployed in the North of the Sinai peninsula.

After Morsi’s calamitous Islamist experiment, Egypt cannot sink into a state of permanent political convulsion. The Muslim Brotherhood refuse to acknowledge President Adli Mansur’s provisional government — containing no Islamists, a majority of liberal technocrats, three women and two Christians — in which the head of the armed forces, General Sisi, has reserved for himself the role of vice president and the defense portfolio. People in the street are questioning the legitimacy of the self-appointed government. This is also the case now for the Salafists of Nur, the second most voted Islamist force, which initially voiced their support for the coup.

Nothing suggests any likelihood of an end to this vicious circle as long as the generals, who oversee the government and dictate its agenda, fail to take the necessary steps to restore calm and order in the streets, and to convince the Egyptians that a new phase of transparency, and of reconstruction of the country’s battered political institutions, is on the way.

Any move toward normalization demands, first of all, the immediate release of the former president Morsi if there are no formal charges against him, and in any case, information about his condition and whereabouts. Morsi, whose family has taken legal action against the army for his arbitrary detention, cannot remain a prisoner hidden from the eyes of his compatriots.

Another pendulum swing of politics will not restore to Egypt the center of gravity it so desperately needs. The coup has already set a very grave precedent for other tottering democracies throughout the region. To put civilians back in control of the most important Arab country, and to put its disordered economy back on its feet, is a task that cannot be addressed in the present circumstances of instability.

Fierce repression of the Muslim Brotherhood cannot set the stage for any democratic revision of the Constitution, which, in order to have a chance of long-term stability, would have to include them. Nor can it set the stage for any elections worthy of the name in February 2014. The resentment felt by many Egyptians against the doctrinaire and incompetent government of the Islamists cannot constitute a blank check for arbitrary behavior on the part of the generals.