ARAB SPRING MAKES WAY TO AUTUMN

There is revolutionary unrest in Egypt again. The country, which only recently elected a new leader and seemed to sigh with relief after the regime of Hosni Mubarak finally sunk into oblivion, is gripped by protests again. However, the anti-government energy of the Egyptians is not as great this time for a considerable part of them express support for President Muhammad Morsi, which is why the opposition is still unable to put together a nationwide coalition of protest.

The relative stability in the "Land of the Pyramids" was disrupted by the head of state's decision to significantly expand his powers. On 22 November, Morsi unveiled a "constitutional declaration" under which the courts lost the right to question his orders. This, according to the opposition, disrupted the balance between the branches of government, and the president himself, in fact, concentrated dictatorial powers in his hands.

An even greater outrage was caused by the government's decision to hold a referendum for the adoption of a new constitution on 15 December. The liberal opposition is unhappy that Muslim Brotherhood, from which the current president hails, wants to impose on society its own ideas about what the Egyptian state should be like. In particular, they do not like the postulates of the new constitution, according to which the authorities undertake to defend the "true nature of Egyptian society" and art intended to support its morals and values. These allegations, according to the opposition, testify to the desire of Muslim Brotherhood to tighten censorship and strengthen the persecution of dissenters. President Morsi's opponents are also concerned about the article on the inadmissibility of slander - in their opinion, this provision could be used against independent journalists. Finally, critics of the Islamist president noted the disappearance of the phrase on the inadmissibility of discrimination against women from the text of the basic law. All the above points, according to the opposition, clearly show the intention of Morsi and his team to put an end to secularism in Egypt and turn it into a clerical state.

Immediately after the publication of the draft constitution, one of opposition leaders and former head of the IAEA, Muhammad El-Baradei, promised that the document would soon become "part of the political folklore and be consigned to the dustbin of history". At the same time, he called on supporters of the democratic development of the country to take to the streets. The centre of protests, by tradition, is once again Tahrir Square in central Cairo.

Liberals organized a "National Front for the Salvation of the Revolution", which demanded the cancellation of the referendum on the constitution. The intensity of protests could not be prevented by Muhammad Morsi's appeal to initiate a national dialogue. The opposition march to the presidential palace turned into clashes that followed Muslim Brotherhood's call on its supporters to take to the streets to protect the authority of Muhammad Morsi. According to official data alone, six people were killed and more than 700 people were injured.

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil urged both sides to "calm down, stop, not to start a fratricidal conflict and to start a dialogue". However, the opposing parties seem to believe that there is nothing to start a dialogue about, because they all take diametrically opposite positions affecting the fate of Egypt in the long-term.

The secular, liberally-oriented part of Egyptian society has good reasons to believe that President Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood supporting him are establishing a new dictatorship in the country - an Islamist dictatorship, in which, citizens will have to live under Shariah law by the will of only one half of the population. In this sense, statements by Islamist politicians themselves, who mobilize their supporters, saying - "we are fighting not for Morsi, but for the commandments of the Prophet and against atheists and liberals" - are very revealing.

However, the very fact that Muhammad Morsi relies on a large part of the population makes the current situation fundamentally different from the time of the rise of the Egyptian revolution when liberals and Islamists together rushed to overthrow the dictatorship of Mubarak. The latter had virtually lost all social support by the end of his reign. But Morsi is backed by quite influential political forces (not just Muslim Brotherhood, but also Salafis) that have more than 60 per cent of seats in the Legislative Assembly.

The army factor, which was a key factor under Mubarak, is still there, of course. The army continues to be a major pillar of secularism in Egypt, but it should be borne in mind that in recent months, Muhammad Morsi has managed to install his own people in the senior military leadership. Just three months ago, the president carried out an unprecedented purge in the army leadership, dismissing Defence Minister Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi and a number of generals. The president personally replaced them with representatives of army circles that are more or less loyal to the Islamists. Thus, Morsi significantly strengthened his political influence. Under the current conditions when the threat of civil war is looming over Egypt, it is still not clear: will the army decide to support the liberal, secular circles in the end as they hope? An unpleasant thing for them is also that President Morsi has given the army police powers, allowing the military to arrest civilians in order to ensure the security and protection of state institutions. And these powers will be valid until the announcement of the results of the constitutional referendum.

Protecting himself in this way and, quite obviously, not wanting to further aggravate the situation in the country, President Morsi decided to cancel the 9 December declaration to expand his powers. The new constitutional declaration he adopted provides for direct elections to the constitutional commission that will form a new basic law if the Egyptians disagree with the draft constitution put to a referendum on 15 December.

However, this was the only point on which the president made a concession to the opposition. On the main issue that caused the confrontation - the constitutional referendum, Morsi is trying to show far greater intransigence. Though Prime Minister Qandil said that "the president and the political forces of the country are discussing legal ways of postponing the referendum", the head of state himself is trying to show that he supports the vote on time. That is why the liberal opposition rejected the new constitutional declaration, calling on all secular forces to continue mass demonstrations. The "Front" rejects the declaration and will not accept a referendum on the new constitution, which it considers one-sided, not agreed upon by all the political forces and social strata of Egyptian society and not in the interests of the Egyptian people," the leaders of the "Front" said.

In the mounting confrontation in Egypt, which leads to new victims among the opposing forces, another real threat to the country is attempts to dismember its territory by political principles. Thus, the opposition declared the independence of the province of Alexandria from the "Islamist regime". The cities of Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra and Al-Mansura north of Cairo were also declared "free from Islamists". The former, by the way, is regarded as the cradle of the Egyptian revolution: it was there that the opposition "6 April Movement" arose in 2009 and the first major anti-government protests took place.

All of these processes clearly raise the question about the tasks and very sense of the Egyptian revolution. Being part of the so-called "Arab Spring" and having taken place in one of the largest countries of the Islamic world, it failed to outline for millions of people living with aspirations to decent life the real prospects for the realization of their desires in the short-term. Not to mention the fact that there is still a question: to what extent are revolutions, like the Egyptian revolution, the product of the Arab reality itself and to what extent are they skillfully manipulated from the outside only to ensure that Egypt and other Arab countries fail as states and engulf in notorious regulated chaos? With all the ensuing consequences for their peoples who are in painful search of their place in the modern globalist world and find an outlet only in overthrowing long-time dictatorships, which others, who are no less ambitious in terms of possessing total power, rush to replace.