By Andrew Boktor

My previous article ended with a strange and complicated situation: Egypt, the head of the Middle East, is without a ruler.  Imagine that you have an exam, so you studied so hard, and you did well in this exam, but you forgot to write your name on the answer sheet. You wouldn’t get credit–it means you did nothing. That is exactly what happened in the revolution. The youth did a great job. They did what was impossible to imagine. But they don’t have a leader. There was no specific leader who represented the revolution. Now Moubarak is out. Who will rule? “The supreme council of the armed forces “ is not a ruler; it’s a temporary council to run the country for a while.  This is where we will start.  It is 11 February 2011, Moubarak is out; people are celebrating in the streets at midnight. The day after was a normal day. Rebels went back to their lives. “The supreme council of the armed forces “announced that they will run the country for 6 months. Sounds good. But in the end they extended it for 18 months full of disasters.

Mubarak was arrested with all his gang members. They are being tried in court, but for now, let’s focus on the rest of Egypt.  Now the country needs a constitution, but it will take months to create a new one. So “the supreme council of the armed forces” decided to make a Constitutional Declaration. People needed to approve it, so they held a Referendum (a vote). I think that was wrong, and they should have created a new one. But that is how it happened, and it started a war.  Muslim extremists announced that whoever votes “yes” will enter paradise upon death, and whoever votes “no” is not a true Muslim. Obviously, there is no relationship between entering paradise and voting on a Referendum, but history shows us that religion is a very effective political tool in poor countries. Not surprisingly, the result on the vote was about 80% yes.  This was a step in the wrong direction:  Muslim extremists won the first battle, and the second battle was the parliamentary elections. Anyone with knowledge of the politics of post-revolt countries would say that Egypt should start with president elections. But that was the second fault. This election was a real war.

“The Muslim brotherhood party”, a group of Muslim extremists, had a history of struggle.   Moubarak used to persecute them, and now they are free. They were the strongest, most organized party in the mix at the time, and environmental conditions were perfect for their success.  Egypt is a poor country, Islam is the most prevalent religion, and the illiteracy rate is high.  Although Liberal parties were calling for a modern country, the Muslim brotherhood did everything they could to seize power.  They even (illegally) distributed food to poor people in exchange for their votes.  In the end, the majority of the “elected” parliament were Muslim extremists.  And what about the real rebels?  Now they didn’t have a chance to do anything.

In an effort to gain even more power, the “the supreme council of the armed forces “ decided to institute their own prime minister: they chose a man who used to be prime minster during Moubarak regime. The youth went back to the streets. From this point a series of bloody events happened. The youth started to fight the police and the armed forces while at the same time trying to recover from the new government’s mistakes.  Since the parliament was full of extremist and had the support of the “supreme council of armed forces”, they started to do whatever they wanted. They didn’t care for the youth and the people.

The next step in this struggle was the presidential election.  By now, Egyptians had begun to distrust the Muslim brotherhood.  Many people decided not to support them anymore, but they still had a base of Islamic supporters.  Although the Muslim brotherhood party had promised that they wouldn’t enter the presidential election at all, they were now offering their own candidate: Mohamed Morsy.  Altogether, there were 13 candidates in the elections. The most popular 3 were Mouhamed Shafiq, and Hamden Sabhy, and Morsy.  Shafiq, the last prime minster during Moubarak’s regime,  had a lot of supporters. Although he had a good reputation (which is why Moubarak had chosen him in the middle of revolution to try to calm down the youth), he was still Moubarak’s man.  Hamden Sabhy was one of the liberal rebels.  All the youth were with him but youth and rebels are not enough. Lastly, Mohamed Morsy, the Muslim brotherhood’s candidate, was supported by the parliament and extremists.

The results of the first round of elections were as follows: Mohamed Morsy is the first, Ahmed Shafiq right after him, and in the third place, Hamden Sabahy.  The rebels and youth were shocked by these results. Now the country was stuck in the tight corner: this was the worst scenario they could imagine.  The two options for the second round were either Moubarak’s old prime minster or the Muslim brotherhood’s man.  The second round was chaotic. After the election ended, both candidates announced that they had won, but nothing officially was announced. In normal cases they announce the winners name before a maximum of two days after the election.  No one knows why it took so long, but after two weeks they announced that the winner is Mohamed Morsy, and Shafiq left to travel abroad.

The liberals and Christians were afraid.  But what really happened in Morsy’s regime was worse than what we could have imagined.  Acting like a dictator, he started to convert the entire country to the Muslim brotherhood. All the extremist felt empowered by a ruler on their side, and they started to persecute others—Christians in particular.  The new president started giving the most important leadership positions to members of the Muslim brotherhood. The people were scared.  Egypt started to have other problems like shortages of gas  and electricity. By the end of the first year, Morsy was not very popular.

The new defense minister, Abdel Fatah Elsisi, realized that the people were unhappy with Morsy.  He wanted to make the people trust the armed forces again after the disasters that occured during the “supreme council of the armed forces“ regime.  He decided to stand with the people against Morsy . He asked the people to go out in the streets to support him agnist Morsy, on june 30, 2013, after one year of Morsy’s presidency. There were 30 million in the streets to support “EL SISI“to kick Morsy out, and they were successful. Elsisi gave Morsy 48 hours to institute political reforms according to the peoples’ will. Otherwise, the armed forces would kick him out. On the same day. Morsy gave a long and ridiculous speech, basically saying “I am the president, I don’t care for anyone”.  After 48 hours Morsy was arrested.  It was not coup because Elsisi established the head of the Supreme Court as a temporary ruler. Elsisi appeared on T.V. with important people like Pope Tawdros, the head of modest Islamic people Shikh El-Azhar, and representatives from all parties.  Now Egypt has a new hero, but what will happen to him?  Will the Muslim extremists stay silent while their power is taken away? Actually they tried so hardly to unstable the country. They revenged for their president. Right After announcing that Morsy should leave the presidency. They burned down about 200 churches, Christian organizations. What did the Christian do for them? I don’t know. After a year till this point. Egypt had a good constitution. We are going to have a presidency elections. We have only two candidates the first one is “Elsisi” and the second one is “Hmaden sabahy” again. The rebels are disappointed they see that “El sisi” represent the military regime. And “Hamden sbahy” is not that strong man. What will happen after? I don’t know. We are praying for god to save this great nation.