In transition: Despite the political events of recent years, the nation remains a key player in the region

Over the past two years, a state of transition has become a more or less permanent feature of Egypt’s political scene. After 18 months, the 2011 uprising that led to the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak resulted in the election of a new president, Mohammed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), and a new constitution for the country.

However, by the summer of 2013, the Morsi administration had been removed by the military, following several days of public protests. This back-and-forth highlights the magnitude of the task Egypt faces in establishing itself in the post-Mubarak era.

Historical Background

Although Egyptian history dates back almost 5000 years, the modern Egyptian state was created in 1952, when a group called the Free Officers led the removal of King Farouk and established a new republic, known as the Arab Republic of Egypt, which continues to be the country’s official name to this day. Under Gamal Abdul Nasser, the charismatic leader of the Free Officers, the early republic successfully nationalised the Suez Canal in the face of British and French opposition, and pursued policies designed to industrialise the country and build a modern welfare state.

After his death in September 1970, Nasser was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, who changed tack and worked to realign Egypt with the West rather than the Soviet Union. In economic matters, Sadat pursued a liberal “Open Door” economic policy that welcomed foreign investment and sought to emphasise the involvement of the private sector. Sadat concluded a peace treaty with Israel in March 1979 and was assassinated by an Islamic extremist two years later, on October 6, 1981.

Sadat was succeeded by Mubarak, who is, like Nasser and Sadat before him, a military man. He ruled for 30 years until the revolution of 2011. It is perhaps too early to judge Mubarak’s legacy in full, but it is possible to say that while his regime did record certain economic successes, such as a rising GDP and an increase in foreign investment, it was less successful at ensuring that all segments of the population benefitted from this growth ( particularly Egyptians living in rural areas and the urban poor) and did little to address the issue of corruption. In foreign policy, Mubarak maintained the peace treaty with Israel and was a staunch ally of the US.

Revolution

On January 25, 2011, partly inspired by the successful Tunisian uprising that saw former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ousted, but also due to deep public dissatisfaction with perceived corruption and maladministration, members of the public from a wide spectrum of backgrounds held a protest at Tahrir Square, one of the main public spaces in Cairo’s city centre. After a series of sit-ins and protests across the country, which lasted 18 days, the protestors finally succeeded in forcing President Mubarak to step down and surrender power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

SCAF announced it was assuming control of the country and indicated its intention to eventually transfer power to a civilian government. Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, the chairman of SCAF, acted as a transitional president during this time.

Parliamentary Elections

In November 2011 the first round of elections were held for the House of Representatives, the lower house of Egypt’s bicameral parliament. These were the first free and fair democratic elections in the country’s history, and they delivered a broadly Islamist parliament.

Following the conclusion of the country’s complex elections, the largest single party, with around 43% of the vote, was the FJP, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist revivalist movement that was established in 1928, while the second-largest party was Al Nour, a Salafist party that took 21.8% of the vote. Elections for the Shura Council, the upper house of the Egyptian parliament, followed in February 2012; given the relatively limited power enjoyed by this house, turnout was low at around 10%, but the FJP won an outright majority, with 58.3% of the vote, followed by Al Nour with 25%.

Presidential Elections

In May 2012 a total of 13 candidates stood in the first round of presidential elections. No one candidate won a majority and the presumed front-runners, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a moderate Islamist standing as an independent, and Amr Moussa, former secretary-general of the Arab League, came in fourth and fifth, respectively. However, the summer of 2012 saw much political wrangling over the elections, and in June SCAF dissolved the lower house of parliament after the Supreme Court ruled that the voting process had been unconstitutional. Shortly afterwards, on June 16-17, a run-off between the two presidential candidates who garnered the most votes resulted in a narrow win for Morsi of the FJP, who won 51% of the vote compared to 49% for Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander. Morsi thus became the first democratically elected president in Egyptian history, and assumed office on June 30, 2012. In August 2012, Field Marshal Tantawi was ordered by Morsi to retire as head of the armed forces and defence minister, with General Abdul-Fattah Al Sisi assuming control of the military.

New Constitution

As part of the political transition process, there was a broad consensus among the public and political parties on the need for a replacement constitution to cement the country’s new democratic institutions, as the old constitution that was introduced under Sadat in 1971 was felt to reflect the governing style and lack of accountability of the old regime. In March 2011 parliament nominated a 100-member committee to draft a new constitution that was to be put to a national plebiscite. However, the composition of the group, dominated by Islamists and with liberals, women and minorities only thinly represented, proved controversial and 30 members, including representatives of the Coptic Church and of Al Azhar (the highest jurisprudential institution in Sunni Islam), boycotted the committee, rendering it null and void.

A compromise was reached in early June 2012 when parliament nominated a second 100-person committee with 61 independents, and 38 representatives drawn from 10 different political parties. However, the dissolution of parliament by SCAF in the same month put an end to this initiative, as the military body introduced its own interim constitution in what many felt was an attempt to exert undue influence on the final constitution of the country, prompting renewed protests at Tahrir Square.

In November 2012 President Morsi announced a new committee would draft a constitution to be put to a vote later that year. Most of the committee was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and opposition groups criticised the way in which the new constitution was pushed through, with the drafting process completed in a little over 48 hours. The new constitution was essentially the same as the 1971 constitution, which was used as the model, except that certain articles were amended to give more prominence to the role of Islam in public life and the new charter now allows for Islamist jurists ( especially from Al Azhar) to be consulted on many matters of legislation. Although a referendum held in December 2012 confirmed the new constitution, by roughly 10m votes in favour of versus 6m against, only around a third of the electorate turned out to vote and dissatisfaction with the final document was high.

Summer 2013

Resentment over the content of and the way the new constitution was passed through parliament proved to be one contributing factor to the street protests that took place in late June 2013. After roughly one year in power, popular dissatisfaction with the Morsi administration began to emerge in urban areas, prompted in part by concerns over social policy, objections to government appointments, and the continued lackluster performance of the economy, as well as opposition to the previous year’s electoral results.

The protests gathered momentum, particularly in Cairo, and eventually led to moves by the military to remove Morsi and his administration in early July and suspend the constitution. Parliament was also disbanded and an interim government was installed, headed by the former chief justice of the country’s supreme court, Adly Mansour, along with a cabinet of technocrats. The ouster of the Morsi administration has prompted counter-protests throughout the country, which culminated in a spate of deaths following clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and security forces.

Political Groupings

Egyptian society is very diverse and the country has a long history of cosmopolitanism, making it difficult to draw simplistic political definitions. In terms of the main political groups, broadly Islamist movements include the FJP, the Salafist Al Nour Party, Al Wasat Party, and the Building and Development Party. Among the non-Islamists, the main players are the April 6 Youth Movement, a leftist coalition of trade unionists and activists; Wafd Party, a secular party dating from the early days of Egypt’s independence struggle; Strong Egypt Party, centre-left but with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood; Egyptian Popular Current, a Nasserist/leftist party; and the National Salvation Front, a broad coalition of secularists, socialists and liberals formed in November 2012 in response to frustration with the Morsi administration.

Economic Difficulties

Not unexpectedly, the challenging task of creating a broad-based and popularly supported government – as well as an institutional framework that provides for the election of such a government – has complicated the country’s short-term economic prospects (see Economy chapter). For example, reserves at the Egyptian Central Bank have fallen significantly from $36bn in November 2010 to $13.5bn at the end of February 2013, which is only enough to cover a little over two months of imports. Part of this was due to a managed devaluation of the pound, which had dropped from 6.1 to the dollar in early December 2012 to 6.72 to the dollar as of early March 2013, as well as a drop in activity for major foreign currency earners like tourism.

Short-term fiscal concerns are also constraining activity, with a budget for the 2012/13 fiscal year running a deficit in the double digits. The country has been in negotiations for two years now with the IMF to access a $4.8bn line of credit, but concerns over necessary preconditions have limited progress. In the meantime, the country has received grants and loans from a range of neighbouring states, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Generation Gap

On the positive side, there is a real sense of optimism and engagement among the general public, especially among the younger generation. Approximately 25% of Egyptians are between the ages of 18 and 29, and the potential for rapid social change is quite high. The youthful population is better educated than their parents, with literacy rates running at around 72%. The gross enrolment ratio in Egypt’s primary schools was about 102% as of 2011, which marked an increase from 100% in 2002 and 91% in 1991, and around a third of school leavers attend tertiary education, according to World Bank indicators (see Health & Education chapter).

Public debate, facilitated in part by the increasing access Egyptians across the economic spectrum have to communication and information technology, remains lively (see Telecoms & IT chapter). The growing uptake of electronic social media – more than 13m Egyptians were on Facebook as of the beginning of 2013, for example – the establishment of a wide range of new media outlets and television channels, and the public appetite for wider and franker debate means the Egyptian media is unlikely to return to the status quo ante.

Foreign Policy

Egypt’s foreign policy agenda in recent years leading up to the 2011 revolution highlighted the country’s influence on neighbourhood politics, and was dominated by the ongoing search for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine peace process. Progress has remained elusive, although the country continues to be at the centre of negotiation efforts, with a five-party summit held during the World Economic Forum at Sharm El Sheikh in 2008. Egypt also played an important role in the Lebanese dossier, resulting in the election of President Michel Suleiman following months of deadlock.

In the years since the 2011 revolution, some of those neighbourhood ties have worked to Egypt’s immediate benefit, with the country receiving tens of billions of dollars from Qatar, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE to help shore up its foreign currency reserves. Egypt’s most significant bilateral link outside the Middle East region is with the US, from which it receives a total of nearly $2bn in military and economic aid each year.

President Barack Obama’s decision to address the Muslim world from Cairo shortly after his election reflects both the continued importance of Egypt as a regional political heavyweight and Obama’s desire to enlist the country’s help in both the Arab-Israeli dispute and in ongoing counter-terrorism activity.

The relationship between the two countries has greatly evolved over the last three decades from a partnership that developed primarily as a result of the Middle East peace process into a wider bilateral friendship, which has seen Egypt strongly backing the US-led war against terrorism, despite its reluctance to send troops to Afghanistan and its disapproval of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Egypt also maintains strong ties with the EU, which is its largest trading partner, accounting for 23% of the country’s trade volume in 2012, and has established itself as a leading player in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, a cooperative agreement that includes 35 countries. Further afield, Egypt is assiduously building relationships with rising powers such as India and China, with exports to the latter expected to surpass those to the US within the next decade.