NEW YORK - Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi
has triggered the first real crisis of his
presidency by his sudden and unexpected decision
to arrogate to himself nearly total control of all
branches of the government, including the
judiciary branch, which has revolted against what
Morsi's diverse opponents call his dictatorial
move.
Although Morsi has defended his
action as both necessary and temporary, the
country has now been engulfed in a new political
turmoil that, in case it gets out of control, may
result in a military coup and the restoration of
military government, as feared by rival
politicians such as Mohammed ElBaradei.
Certainly, Morsi's move has been intended
as a preemptive move to disallow the judges
appointed by the ancien regime to decide
the fate of an
Islamist-dominated committee to revise the
constitution. What is at stake is no less than the
form and nature of the future political system
and, indeed, the fate of the new Egyptian
revolution that has been a crowning achievement of
the Arab Spring.
What would Lincoln do? My
mind raced to this question while I was watching
Steven Spielberg's wonderful, albeit myth-making,
portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in the new movie that
focuses on Lincoln's political maneuvers to get
the anti-slavery 13th amendment passed through a
reluctant and fractious Congress.
After
all, Lincoln, arguably the most revered US
president in the country's history, was in some
sense also the most dictatorial US president and
who in his time was much criticized for his
suspension of the writ of habeas corpus during the
Civil War. Targeting the "most sacred rights of
American freemen," to echo some of his
congressional critics, this led to countless
arbitrary arrests, closure of newspapers and
incarceration of dozens of editors, actions all
subsequently sanctioned by the US Supreme Court,
in the case of Milligan, where the court reasoned
that the suspension of habeas corpus was
permissible.
As is well-known, Lincoln's
justification was that his powerful blow to the
supremacy of law was "constitutional when, in
cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety
requires them, which would not be constitutional
when, in the absence of rebellion or invasion, the
public safety does not require them."
Lincoln was not particularly sensitive to
the rights of his opponents and deemed nearly all
means appropriate and justified for the end, ie a
successful persecution of the war against the
secessionist South. Thus, in his message to a
special session of Congress on July 4, 1861,
Lincoln stated:
It was decided that we have a case
of rebellion, and that the public safety does
require the qualified suspension of the
privilege of the writ which was authorized to be
made. Now it is insisted that Congress, and not
the Executive, is vested with this power ... It
cannot be believed that the framers of the
instrument intended, that in every case, the
danger should run its course.
It is
noteworthy that some of Lincoln's contemporaries
who deemed his action unconstitutional
nevertheless backed him with the rationalization
that the Civil War emergency "show[s] that even
legality must sometimes be sacrificed for other
values." Lincoln himself never denied his stretch
in presidential power but those extraordinary
actions "whether strictly legal or not ventured
upon ... public necessity."
Turning to
Egypt's Morsi, at present under fire for invoking
public necessity for his supposedly draconian
measure, which ignited a popular revolt in the
streets of Cairo as well as on the judicial
benches around the country (although some justices
have decided to endorse Morsi instead of
challenging him), it may be instructive to make
limited comparisons between him and Lincoln by
drawing on the "mystic cords of memory", to borrow
a term from Lincoln's first inaugural speech.
In fact, the parallels are rather
striking. Much like Lincoln who was attacked for
usurping "regal authority" during the Civil War,
Morsi is now branded as Egypt's new pharoah. And
just as Lincoln defended himself against criticism
by citing a higher priority, that is, maintaining
the Union at all costs, Morsi today can be heard
discoursing about safeguarding the fruits of
revolution by centralizing power in his hands.
Change Lincoln's term of "rebellion" for
Morsi's "reactionaries" and
"counter-revolutionaries" and one sees the strong
and unmistakable parallels. Both cases remind us
that political leadership, especially at a time of
great national turmoil, is a complicated and at
times contradictory phenomenon.
Perhaps
Morsi should not be compared to Lincoln at all,
and it is too early to conclude whether he shares
some of Lincoln's presidential leadership: his
depth of vision, strategic command, political
savvy, and techniques as a great communicator.
What is beyond doubt is that Morsi now
faces a litmus test of his leadership, in a crisis
of his own making, yet one that may have been
inevitable, and we shall soon find out if he has
another one of Lincoln's great qualities, namely,
the ability to learn from his errors and evolve.
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