Egypt’s Military Council Tries to Hold on to Power

Egypt’s ruling military council – the Supreme Council of Armed Forces – issued a declaration Sunday giving itself sweeping new powers, including legislative powers and budgetary control.

Marco Werman talks with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven Cook to find out where these developments leave Egypt’s revolution.

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Marco Werman: Critics of the Egyptian military have used the word “coup” to describe how generals have grabbed extra powers in recent days. Steven Cook says that’s debatable. Cook is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Steven Cook: The dissolution of parliament is certainly a power that the Supreme Council does not have, although they were clearly working off of the decision of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, which had declared the election of a third seat in the parliament null and void. The military then followed on with a constitutional decree giving itself a whole range of new powers. So in that sense it certainly looks a lot like a coup, but I think in contrast what the military is trying to do is to exit politics in as safe a manner as it possibly can from their own perspective. This was a hedge against the presidency of Mohamed Mursi and the SCAF, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces wants to leave politics with its economic interests in tact and with its exalted status in the Egyptian political system in tact. They weren’t sure that they would get that from Mursi after trying to negotiate this with some political force and as a result they’ve issued this decree.

Werman: Right, so now the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces say they’ll hand over power to the newly elected president, which does appear to be Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, but after yesterday’s declaration how much power is left to hand to a new president?

Cook: Well, that’s exactly right. The military was clearly saying that it will not subordinate itself to the new president, a civilian and certainly if Mursi does turn out to be the winner, certainly the Muslim Brotherhood, which the military has been at odds with for the better part of the last 60 years. The decree says that the president cannot declare war without the approval of Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces retains the right to make its own decisions about Egypt’s Security and Defense Policy, so they really have done what they could to gut the president of a variety of powers that are related directly to the military. And this way they insulate themselves from whatever a civilian might try to do to the presidency and retain power and influence for themselves in the political system.

Werman: And retaining that power and dissolving Egypt’s parliament yesterday, I mean is there any legal basis for these actions?

Cook: There’s none, although that obviously hasn’t prevented them from doing it. There is a long history of militaries in the Middle East, not just in Egypt, going beyond their constitutional legal writ to get precisely what they want. They’ve now said that they will rerun elections in the early fall. They are clearly pointing to the Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision nullifying a third of the seats and, in fact, the Chairman of the Supreme Constitutional Court said without those seats the parliament couldn’t possibly function. So that’s the basis, but the Constitutional declaration that the military itself issued in March 2011 says nothing about their ability to dissolve parliament and at best it says it can adjourn the parliament.

Werman: I mean this has gotta be a somber development for the revolutionaries who were out there in Tahrir Square last year and removed Mubarak from power, essentially.

Cook: I think it absolutely is. It seems that the revolutionary promise of Tahrir Square is slipping away. This is not what anyone imagined during the heady days of the uprising. There were great hopes for a more democratic Egypt. Everybody, including the revolutionaries made a lot of mistakes during the last 16 months and we are back at this familiar dynamic pinning the forces of the old regime or the military against the Muslim Brotherhood. Those aren’t the only two relevant political forces in the political arena, but clearly, the strongest.

Werman: Steven Cook, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you very much.

Cook: My pleasure.

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