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Beginning in November 2011, Egypt held its first elections of the post-Mubarak era, with three rounds of voting for the members of the People’s Assembly. When voting was concluded in January, it was clear that the elections had been dominated by Egypt’s Islamist groups: the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won about 47 percent of the seats in the assembly, and the hard-line Nūr Party won about 25 percent.
The presidential race began in February with the announcement that elections would be held in May 2012, with a runoff in June 2012 if necessary. The first in a series of surprise legal and procedural reversals came in April, when the election commission disqualified nearly a dozen candidates, including two of the most prominent: Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s former intelligence chief, and Khairat al-Shater, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. When the first round of voting was held in May, Ahmed Shafiq, a former minister in the Mubarak administration, and Mohamed Morsi, the head of the Freedom and Justice Party, received the highest totals and advanced to the runoff.
Egyptian politics were shaken up again in June by a series of developments denounced by Islamists and political liberals as a “soft coup” carried out by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to retain power and prevent Islamists from gaining control of the legislative and executive branches of government. Just days before the presidential runoff on June 16 and 17, the Supreme Constitutional Court unexpectedly invalidated the results of the legislative elections held in 2011 and 2012, forcing dissolution of the Islamist-dominated People’s Assembly. The action was followed on June 17 by a surprise constitutional declaration by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces expanding its authority and placing new restrictions on the powers of the incoming president.
On June 24 Mohamed Morsi was declared the winner of the presidential election, and he took office at the end of the month. Although Morsi began his presidency in a state of apparent subordination to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, he moved to take the upper hand in mid-August, announcing the retirement of several senior members of the council and revoking the constitutional declaration of June 17.
The process of writing a new constitution became the focus of bitter contention between the Islamists and a loose opposition comprising liberal, secular, and Christian factions. The Islamists’ strong performance in parliamentary elections had allowed them to gain a dominant position in the first Constituent Assembly, a 100-member body tasked with drafting the constitution. Opposition members of the assembly, fearing that the Islamists’ dominance in that body would result in a constitution that ignored non-Islamists’ concerns, staged walkouts and filed lawsuits challenging the legality of the assembly. In April an Egyptian court had dissolved the assembly on procedural grounds, but a new Constituent Assembly formed in June met with the same complaints from the opposition, and boycotts continued.
On November 22, 2012, Morsi moved to address his contentious relations with Egypt’s judiciary and to sidestep legal challenges to the legitimacy of the Constituent Assembly by issuing an edict exempting himself from judicial oversight and removing the courts’ power to dissolve the Constituent Assembly. Although Morsi defended the edict as a necessary measure to protect Egypt’s transition to democracy, mass demonstrations were held against what many saw as a seizure of dictatorial powers.
On November 30 the Constituent Assembly approved a draft constitution without the input of the boycotting Christian and secularist members. Morsi called for a referendum on the draft to be held on December 15. Both opponents and supporters of Morsi staged rallies around the country, resulting in some of the largest demonstrations since 2011. Crowds demanding Morsi’s ouster gathered at the presidential palace and ransacked several Muslim Brotherhood offices. As protests continued in early December, Morsi bowed to public anger and rescinded parts of his constitutional decree but retained the article preventing the courts from dissolving the Constituent Assembly. He declared martial law on December 9, authorizing the military to make arrests and keep order until the constitutional referendum could be held. The draft constitution was approved by voters and took effect in late December. Sporadic violent protests against Morsi’s rule continued into early 2013.
The June 30 Revolution
Worsening economic conditions, deteriorating public services, and a string of sectarian incidents exacerbated political polarization in mid-2013. Calls for Morsi’s resignation increased, led by a loose coalition including liberals, religious minorities, and Egyptians angered by high rates of unemployment and inflation. Clashes between Morsi’s supporters and critics in late June 2013 culminated in massive anti-Morsi protests around the country on June 30, the first anniversary of his inauguration. The protests were the largest since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak two years earlier and included calls for the military to intervene to oust Morsi in a similar manner. More than a dozen people were killed, and many more were injured.
On July 1, with Egypt seemingly on the brink of a major crisis, the head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, declared that the military was ready to intervene to prevent chaos in the country if the two sides were unable to resolve their differences within two days. Morsi responded to the protests by offering negotiations with the opposition but refused to step down. Protests continued, and on July 3 the military made good on its ultimatum, temporarily suspending the constitution, removing Morsi from the presidency, and creating a new interim administration to be led by the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour. As Mansour was tasked with implementing the military’s transition road map, however, it was clear that he ultimately answered to Sisi.
While senior military officials worked to assemble a transitional cabinet, the Muslim Brotherhood boycotted invitations to participate in the transition, and members held demonstrations around the country to protest Morsi’s removal. While these demonstrations showed that there was significant opposition to Morsi’s removal, the military was also able to muster significant support. In late July Sisi called on Egyptians to take to the streets on July 26 for a mandate “to confront terrorism and violence.” On July 26, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians rallied in support of the military.
The next day security forces killed nearly 100 demonstrators at a rally for the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. It was the second lethal mass response to a Muslim Brotherhood-led protest, after security forces opened fire on a crowd of Morsi supporters outside a military base on July 8, killing at least 50 people and wounding hundreds more. The military had maintained the July 8 response was due to a need to defend a military base against armed attackers. On August 14 security forces took action to break up Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo, killing more than 1,000 over a period of several days while descending on protesters’ encampments. In the aftermath of the attack, Egyptian authorities declared a state of emergency, an action seen by many as restoring the military authoritarianism of the Mubarak era.
The new government also cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization. A number of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders, including Morsi, had been placed under arrest as early as Morsi’s ouster, and television stations affiliated with the organization were shut down. The Muslim Brotherhood was formally dissolved in September. Meanwhile, accused Muslim Brotherhood activists and supporters were rounded up and convicted in mass trials for a variety of crimes allegedly committed during the protests following Morsi’s removal. Death sentences were passed against hundreds of accused members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including many who had been convicted in absentia, in the spring of 2014.
Many feared that the new administration’s suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood would provoke violent resistance by Islamists, and the months following Morsi’s removal did indeed witness a series of attacks by Islamist militants against police and military targets. The Egyptian military launched counterinsurgency operations in response, especially in the Sinai Peninsula, where most of the militant groups were based.
In September 2013 the interim government set out to transition back to a constitutional government. It appointed a committee to amend the constitution written in 2012 by the Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly. Intended to represent a cross section of Egyptian society, the committee’s 50 members were drawn from a variety of Egyptian institutions and groups. The Muslim Brotherhood was unrepresented, while two members represented the more conservatively Islamist Nūr Party. Unsurprisingly, the committee removed or weakened many of the provisions favoured by Islamists in the 2012 constitution and bolstered language enshrining the military and the police as autonomous institutions shielded from civilian oversight. The amended text passed with more than 98 percent of the vote in a referendum in January 2014.
The new constitution allowed elections to be held in May 2014. Sisi had repeatedly denied having any ambition to stand in the presidential election, but he enjoyed substantial popularity and was seen by many as the country’s best hope for economic and political stability. In March he reversed his previous denials and announced that he would resign from the military to run for president.
The overwhelming favourite, Sisi campaigned on promises to reduce poverty through a variety of development programs and to maintain national security, which included a continued crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. As expected, the election in May 2014 produced a lopsided victory for Sisi against his only opponent, the leftist Hamdeen Sabahi.
