Parliament caught in political ambiguity: will the president respect legislative independence?
Experts warn of unfair representation, state control and failing publicâs expectations
Latest in Tag: H.A. Hellyer Highlight
Latest in Tag: H.A. Hellyer
Preventing terror is a job for all
Earlier this week, a bomb attack on an Egyptian tourist bus took place in Sinai, taking the lives of three South Korean tourists, and one Egyptian driver. More were wounded in the attack, which was claimed the following day by the Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (ABM) group as part of an âeconomic warâ against Egyptâs military-backed …
Iâm not a journalist â but the least I can do is salute them
âOne of the objects of a newspaper is to understand the popular feelings and give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable elements; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.â Mahatma Ghandi Iâm not a journalist. My father was a journalist, on and off, for around two decades. …
Dogged determination â a more sober Jan25
Three years ago, as a friend of mine puts it, everything seemed possible. The 25th of January uprising gave birth to a revolution, and the sky was the limit. Today, as the third anniversary draws close, the promises of Tahrir Square seem distant. Optimism over opportunities is replaced with incredulousness over madness, the inclusive nature of the …
The Egyptian lobbies
Since the military ouster of Mohammed Morsi, different Egyptian groups have lobbied the international community more than ever since the revolution began in 2011. The diversity of the lobby is more than probably ever before â and the intensity of those efforts is perhaps unmatched as well. The irony is â none of those lobbying …
How many times does Egypt have to do this to get it right?
Three years is not a particularly long time. In fact, in the history of nations, itâs not more than a blip on the timeline. Yet, in three years, Egyptians have seen events repeat themselves again, and again. Theyâre about to see it happen again with this forthcoming constitutional referendum â a recurrence of a bad …
Letâs kill them all
This time last year, Egyptians were a week away from the disastrous extra-judicial decree of then president, Mohamed Morsi. Everyone knew, however, even without that decree, that the Muslim Brotherhood-led government had not the faintest idea (or perhaps intention) on how to govern inclusively. In a country that desperately needed consensus in order to simply …
Crosses flanked by Crescents wonât cut it
Christmas Eve. New Yearâs Eve mass. A wedding. None of these should turn into a funeral â but that is exactly what has happened in Egypt. The most recent round of violence, the targeting of a Coptic wedding procession in Giza, left four people dead and around a dozen wounded. The response is likely to …
The politics of remembering death
A group of peaceful protesters marched, and were set upon by official state forces â at the end of the violence, 28 people were dead, and more than 200 people were injured. At the time, human rights activists insisted that not only should an investigation take place into the killings: but that it should be …
Syria
It could be that by the time this article goes to press, a strike has already taken place on Syria by a conglomerate of forces, led mostly by the US and France. It could be that it has not. The decision to do it, one way or the other, is beyond the purview of the …
Choices
Things in Egypt are moving quite quickly. It has gotten to the point where if one stops keeping up to date for an hour, one finds that a fundamental shift has just taken place â again. With that in mind, I am keenly aware that in the space of time it takes for me to …
Days of impunity
On 2 February 2011, I was in Tahrir Square and I left in the early afternoon to go home. Within a half hour of my leaving, camels, horses and thugs attacked Tahrir Square, resulting in more than a dozen deaths and hundreds wounded. That day is now etched into Egyptian revolutionary history as the Battle …
Morsiâs best contribution to Egypt would be to make peace
âHelp us make sense of this?â That is usually the question an analyst gets asked. The good ones tend to try their best, with as many qualifications as possible, knowing that they cannot possibly account for all the variables. They also know who else to direct people to, in order to get a wider, more …
Day of reckoning: 30 June or later
It feels like a day of reckoning for a reason, because it is one. As 30 June 2013 draws nearer, it does not feel at all like a repeat of 25 January 2011. Instead, it appears to be a repeat of 28 January 2011, combined with the protests of early December 2012 outside the presidential …
A Farce
A farce. That is all I can say about the NGO trial verdict that was delivered on 4 June in post-Mubarak, present-Morsi, still-not-revolutionary Egypt. Here is the verdict, plain and simple. Guilty. Didnât hear that right? Guilty. Every single defendant on trial in the NGO court case that has been dragging on for more than …
âRebellionâ Campaign: Not undemocratic, but not quite useful…yet
In the past few weeks, media circles in Cairo have been buzzing with talk of a new grassroots campaign designed to end President Mohamed Morsiâs term in office. In a matter of weeks, the campaign claims it has managed to collect in excess of 2 million signatures calling for early presidential elections. Opponents of the …
Egypt is not Somalia (it isnât Switzerland, either)
The last two weeks were not a huge surprise. For some, it seems that the last couple of weeks were the result of a strategy by forces opposed to the presidency of Mohamed Morsiâthat the violence was planned, arranged, and implemented. There is a corresponding logic to that line of thoughtâthat had the violence not …
Blame the ‘OmniOpposition’
This OmniOpposition is labelled as such because, it seems, it is everywhere â and does everything
On hope and gratitude in 2013: the rock and the tide
I am not particularly enthusiastic about New Yearâs Eve. My favourite in the last decade was in 2007/8; my wife and I watched a movie, and fell asleep at 11pm. That is usually the extent of my excitement on this night. But it seems that a lot of my dear friends take this evening rather seriously, …
Christians, Muslims and solidarity: the Egyptian challenge
By H.A. Hellyer CAIRO: The recent burning of a church in Cairoâs Imbaba district reminded me of New Yearâs Eve this year, when I was in Cairo. At the time, I heard about the bombing outside the church in Alexandria, and I saw the outrage that took place on the streets of Cairo â and the …
Beyond the referendum, and Tahrir – squared
By H.A. Hellyer CAIRO: The âyesâ camp in last monthâs referendum for constitutional reform, which was supposed to bring forward early parliamentary elections in Egypt, got 77 percent of the vote. The ânoâ vote got the rest. And now people are trying to figure out what this means. There are several things both the âyesâ voters …
Tahrir squared
By H. A. Hellyer It took everyone by surprise. It took the regime by surprise. It took the world by surprise. But more than anyone, it took the Egyptian people by surprise. There have been a lot of assumptions about the Middle East region in general, and Egypt in particular. Some of them are absurd, and …