SALON

Tuesday, Jun 19, 2012 1:45 AM UTC

The Supreme Council of Armed Forces: Egypt’s new dictator?

The Supreme Council of Armed Forces' 11th-hour power grab shows the tumult of Egypt's attempt with democracy

By

Topics: GlobalPost,

The Supreme Council of Armed Forces: Egypt's new dictator?Egyptian soldiers stand alert during a protest in front of Egypt's highest court. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

CAIRO, Egypt — No mutinous troops stormed the presidential palace. Nor were there late-night executions of civilian politicians, or the dramatic seizure of the state-run broadcaster.

Global Post

But what has happened in Cairo over the last week is what many Egyptian observers are calling a military coup.

“It is not a coup by tanks, but a coup by the judiciary,” said Khaled Fahmy, the chair of the American University in Cairo’s history department.

Less than an hour after polls closed in the final round of Egypt’s first presidential elections on Sunday, the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) issued a constitutional declaration granting itself executive, legislative and even constitutional powers for an indefinite period of time — just days after the supreme court dissolved the first democratically-elected parliament.

According to preliminary but unofficial results, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi secured the most votes by a slim margin, beating out former regime official, Ahmed Shafiq, for Egypt’s presidency.

But that appeared to matter little as the military’s declaration — described by analysts as an 11-hour power grab and perhaps the clearest sign yet that Egypt’s revolution was never complete — strips any new president of all but the most cosmetic of authorities.

The military had pledged to transfer full authority to a civilian government on June 30, but will now hold the sole power to legislate until both a new constitution and a new parliament are formed.

“[The declaration] effectively establishes a state within a state,” Fahmy, a longtime academic writer on Egyptian military affairs, said of the army’s solidified rule. “SCAF will pass the laws that define SCAF. How can you challenge this? It’s a serious blow to the rule of law, and extremely dangerous.”

Egypt’s military rulers, influential but operating largely behind-the-scenes, seized control when former president, Hosni Mubarak, became the target of a series of unprecedented street protests last year.

When the army rolled into the streets atop tanks during the uprising, though vowing not to fire on protestors in their bid to topple the regime, Egyptians euphorically embraced the soldiers as allies in the fight.

As Egyptians saw themselves embarking on a new era of representative democracy, the ageing generals eased Mubarak from power in February 2011, subsequently styling themselves as the custodians of Egypt’s fledgling democracy.

“Circumstances forced the army to take on this role, until the parliament and the constitution both came into force,” said retired Brig. Gen., and military analyst, Mohamed Kadry said.

But since then, the army has battled with pro-democracy activists and Egypt’s largest political party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, to retain key privileges for the armed forces in a new constitution.

More from GlobalPost: What’s wrong with Mubarak?

Many political figures expected the army, with extensive business holdings and funds, to maintain some sort of special autonomy that shielded at least certain aspects of its operations from civilian oversight.

“Details [of the military budget] must be subject to scrutiny by all ministries whose work is related to that of the military, as well as the president,” Said told GlobalPost. “But any ministry whose work is not related to the military has no need to know military secrets.”

But Sunday’s addendum — which acts as a supplement to the March 2011 constitutional declaration, and follows the granting of sweeping new arrest powers to the military police — stunned even those with long-held suspicions of SCAF’s quest for political supremacy.

“They went way, way further than anyone had thought,” Fahmy said. “The scale and the language used are just unprecedented. They [the military] want to be able to write the constitution, draft laws and to execute them.”

In addition to investing itself with broad, unchallenged authority, SCAF also declared that the council of generals, with its current make-up of 19 members, would remain unchanged with the formation of a new government.

With Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, current de-facto ruler of Egypt, at its head, the council will maintain veto power over declarations of war, and enjoy legal immunity from prosecution if the president requests that the armed forces engage in domestic policing.

Previously, a new civilian president would have automatically become the head of SCAF, and would have held the authority to change its members.

“Tantawi is minister of defense for life,” Fahmy said.

“This severely limits the powers of the president and his relations vis-à-vis the armed forces,” said Abdo Mostafa Abdel Rahman, a member of the FJP’s Supreme Committee in the northern Egyptian province of Damietta. “It is unacceptable.”

The Brotherhood, while ecstatic over Morsi’s reported victory in the presidential race, appeared poised to clash with Egypt’s ruling generals as the political crisis deepened on Monday.

Rejecting the dissolution of parliament last week, lawmakers vowed to march on the people’s assembly building — now guarded by a mixture of police and soldiers — and convene Tuesday’s session in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square.

“All of this, it is a declaration of war on the political forces of this country,” said Amr Daraag, a leading Brotherhood member in the Giza province, included in Greater Cairo.

“We no longer have civilian power invested in any political entity in this country,” he said.

Heba Habib contributed reporting from Cairo, Egypt.

More GlobalPost

More Erin Cunningham.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 2 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from GlobalPost, an awarding-winning international news site that focuses on original reporting from journalists stationed around the world. GlobalPost combines traditional journalistic values with the power of new media to offer a fresh perspective on global developments.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
218 points219 points | 13 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
195 points196 points | 29 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
182 points183 points | 110 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
79 points80 points | 16 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
46 points47 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations