Egypt referendum: opposition calls for fraud inquiry

that Morsi could possibly have believed that his ramming-through of the constitutional process would stick.*

His other efforts were bad enough; but this last bit simply vaporizes any remaining shred of legitimacy he might otherwise have claimed.

*In fact, it almost makes me wonder if he'd received some kind of assurance that we'd look the other way?

You ram things through with a narrow majority, your opponent says you lack legitimacy and decides to take action to hamstring what you're trying to do. Officials don't play ball, there are court challenges and lots of name calling.

It happens in the US. It happens in Egypt.

When you're in the minority, you have valid concerns and your opinion needs to be taken into account. (In the case of Egypt, walking out of the constitutional assembly when you're in the minority and then making the claim that your views weren't taken into account is borderline absurd.)

When you're in the majority, you have a mandate to make sure that what you want is done before the idiots can convince a majority of people to oppose you. The numbers don't matter--what they "mean" is entirely in the mouth of the loudest person.

In Egypt 57% was "a narrow victory." 64% still isn't compelling. In Egypt.

In the US, a vote of 51-49 is a mandate, and a 54%-46% victory is a landslide. (But only when we're on the side of the 51 votes or 54% election results.)


In this case, though, the claims are probably more for domestic PR and innuendo than verifiable to any large degree. Mubarak's regime was hated in part because it was viewed as corrupt. Of course every leader is out for his own tribe/clan/family/self. He did it wrong. He was inappropriately corrupt.

The Ikhwan's big claim to legitimacy was being uncorrupt. The liberals lost the argument not on its merits, but on the grounds of trust--people don't vote logic, and when they do vote logic they don't always have the same premises. In this case any accusations of corruption, however slight and trivial, constitute not an argument but an undermining of trust. It may not make people trust the liberals in Egypt. But that's a later goal. What's important now is making sure that the Ikhwan is *not* trusted.

That the end result may be a kind of nihilism, in which the populace trusts *nobody* is beside the point. The short-term gain of making something desirable merely possible is much more important than the long-term gain of making something undesirable likely. For this they can look to the US as an example.

how ?

Apparently, the answer is yes; see http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021960980 .

(To dipsydoodle, it's relevant to those who consider themselves citizens of humanity.)

I don't. I think the Egyptians just voted to approve a constitution in line with majority values there. They may not be values with which we agree, but it's not our country--it's theirs. The struggle will continue.

have made loan commitments to Morsi.

As usual, they/we prefer the "stability" of dictatorship to the unpredictability of true democracy.

I don't believe the majority of Egyptians appreciate having a constitution that was drafted in 2 weeks without their participation rammed down their throats; in any case, the ridiculously accelerated process destroys any possible perception of legitimacy.