When the Egyptian president Morsi gave himself dictatorial powers I suggested that:
We will not hear a word of protest over this from the White House. Just imagine an Egypt where the government would have to implement what the Egyptian people want. The horrors. Much nicer than to have a new dictator, even a religious one, to implement Washington’s policies.
With his negotiation of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Morsi had just proven that his foreign policy is very much in line with western wishes and unchanged from Mubarak times.
We therefore have heard nothing from the White House or other western governments that puts pressure on Morsi to retract his edicts. What we get instead is an attempt by some leading western media to whitewash the dictatorial powergrab by suggesting that Morsi has somewhat backtracked on it.
- The NYT headlines: Seeming Retreat by Egypt Leader on New Powers
- The Washington Post claims: Egypt’s Morsi appears to accept some limits on his power
- The NBCnews blog: Egypt’s Morsi, top judges compromise to defuse soaring tensions over decree
- The BBC claims: Egypt crisis: Mohammed Mursi tries to defuse tension
None of that is true. Morsi spokesperson made it clear that nothing, that is zero, changed in his declaration:
Egypt’s President is sticking by a controversial decree granting him sweeping powers, on the eve of planned nationwide rallies to protest the move.
There is ‘no change to the constitutional declaration’, presidential spokesman Yasser Ali told reporters, after a meeting on Monday between Morsi and the country’s top judges aimed at defusing the dispute.
Unlike what some media suggest there was no change in Morsi’s position. That he would continue in his dictatorial stage was also obvious when yesterday Mursi changed the professional union code to allow himself to stack union leader positions with Muslim Brotherhood people:
According to the new law, the manpower minister, who is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, may appoint workers who are members of the group in leadership positions that would become vacant in the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which has always been affiliated with the government.
…
It also grants the minister the right to appoint board members of unions if the minimum required number of members is not attained for any reason, to fill the vacant seats on the board.Labour activists fear the law paves the way for Brotherhood control of the federation.
The unions and the striking workers, especially in the northern port cities, were very much part of the movement that brought Mubarak down. Stacking the union boards is an attempt by the bourgeois Muslim Brotherhood to get the workers under their control.
But none of pieces with the misleading headlines about the alleged “compromise” mentions the union coup. As long as Morsi is keeping in line with western foreign policy and even supports the general anti-worker globalization agenda he will be lauded to the hilt. It will not matter that he is dictatorial, that his police continues to torture or that the Brotherhood elite will defraud the country.
All the western talk about democracy and human rights is again proven to be just hot air and the western media is again very much in line with that scam.
There are again huge protests in Cairo’s Tahrir square and people are again calling for the downfall of the regime. Only this time they will get no support from the Brotherhood friendly Al Jazeerah and from those western media that are whitewashing the new dictatorship.