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Egyptian
President Mohammed Morsi set the cat among the
pigeons on Sunday evening when he announced
through a written statement that he had pensioned
off the country's top military brass. Nobody, not
even the two generals who were palmed off with
national orders, saw this coming. By KHADIJA
PATEL.
Egypt's new president
Mohamed Morsi dismissed two of the country's most
senior generals on Sunday as he cancelled a
military order that curbed the powers of his
office. Morsi's
spokesperson announced that
long-serving minister of defence Field Marshal
Hussein Tantawi and chief of staff Sami Anan would
retire, revealing as well a supplement to the
Constitutional Declaration, which effectively had
Morsi sharing power with the country's powerful
military.
"Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi
has been transferred into retirement from today,"
presidential spokesman, Yasser Ali, said in a
statement. In his place as armed forces chief and
defence minister, Morsi appointed General Abdel
Fattah Al-Sisi, the youngest of Egypt's generals,
while Anan was replaced by General Sidki Sobhi.
Both men, whose positions may have been weakened
by an embarrassing military debacle last week
against suspected Islamist militants in the Sinai
desert, were appointed as advisers to the
president.
But Morsi, speaking in a
scheduled television appearance at Al-Azhar
university on Sunday night, was careful to stress
that that the move against Tantawi and Anan was
not a move against the men themselves but was
instead an altruistic move for the good of the
country.
"The decisions I took today were
not meant ever to target certain persons, nor did
I intend to embarrass institutions, nor was my aim
to narrow freedoms. I did not mean to send a
negative message about anyone, but my aim was the
benefit of this nation and its people," he said,
tempering his message with praise for the armed
forces.
Earlier, his spokesperson said the
move was calculated to better develop the
institutions of the Egyptian state. "The decision
was a sovereign one, taken by the president to
pump new blood into the military establishment in
the interests of developing a new, modern state,"
he told Reuters.
And though the move to
shelve Tantawi in particular is significant,
Morsi's repeal of the constitutional declaration
that curbed his powers is also coupled with the
cancellation of the constitutional declaration
issued just before Mursi's election, through which
Tantawi and his colleagues curbed presidential
powers. As a result, Morsi was elected to a
presidential office almost as a figurehead. It was
Tantawi and co. who still controlled key
ministries, like defence and foreign affairs. And
though Morsi appeared amenable to the military's
wont for control when he was elected, his move on
Sunday seems to indicate a substantial reordering
of Egypt's political hierarchy as the country
waits for a new constitution to be written.
Crucially, it is Morsi who now who now
holds legislateive powers as well as overseeing
the writing of the new constitution. As Juan Cole,
professor of history at the University of Michigan
and Middle East analyst, mused on his blog after
the announcement, "This is BIG."
It was
not clear how far Morsi had consulted with Tantawi
before issuing the decree. The newly appointed
defence minister, General Mohamed Al-Assar, told
the media that he, at least, was aware of the move
before it was announced on national television.
"The decision was based on consultation with the
field marshal and the rest of the military
council," Al-Assar said.
Other well-placed
analysts, however, claim that it was only the
generals who were promoted that were consulted by
Morsi, and Tantawi was definitely not consulted,
fuelling speculation that Sunday's reshuffle of
the military top guns was enabled by a rift
between the generals - a rift that Morsi was able
to capitalise on. Cole notes, "Morsi says that he
consulted the other officers of SCAF about these
changes. That datum, if true, makes this move
sound a little like a junior officers' coup
enabled by the president."
"The departure
of Tantawi was inevitable considering his age and
unpopularity," Issandr Al-Imrani, a commentator
from the popular Arabist blog, wrote in his
analysis of Sunday's events.
Tantawi is,
of course, no bit player in Egyptian politics. He
was the head of Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces (SCAF) that took over Egypt when Hosni
Mubarak was deposed last year, and he served as
defence minister since 1991. "The really
surprising thing is that for months there had been
reports of positioning within the
military-intelligence nexus for the succession
battle for post-Tantawi," Al-Imrani notes. But if
Tantawi and his allies will indeed slink away into
the retiring home gracefully remains to be seen.
Morsi's election was greeted as a tacit
endorsement of the continued role of the military
in the Egyptian state, but what remains to be seen
is how far his moves on Sunday will shift the
power balance between the generals and the Muslim
Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails.
Al-Imrani believes that Morsi's move does
not significantly change the dynamics of his
relationship with the military, but rather
reconfigures it. "This continuity suggests to me
that we are dealing with a reconfigured SCAF that
is nonetheless a powerful entity that still has
powers parallel to the presidency and other
civilian institutions. It is not, as the initial
reaction to today's news largely was, a victory by
Morsi over the military. Rather, it is a
reconfiguration of the relationship," he says. DM
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article is run courtesy of Daily Maverick. To
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