The Muslim Brotherhood's bankrupt 'strategic vision'

As the new Egyptian draft constitution nears finalization, the National Alliance for Supporting Legitimacy has issued an 1,800-word statement titled “A Strategic Vision.” In brief, the Muslim Brotherhood, hiding behind the alliance, now wishes to hold a dialogue (with the interim government?) and give up on Mohammed Morsi — perhaps after finding out that its plan to sabotage the road map has failed as Egyptians are about to vote on the new constitution.

The statement was rife with dull redundancy. It reminded me of Morsi’s last speech. During that ominous address, Morsi repeated the word legitimacy 59 times. In the new statement, the word “coup” was used 40 times. The statement repeatedly mentioned the terms “ending the coup,” “breaking the coup” and “rejecting the coup.” Additionally, the word “legitimacy” appeared 14 times. And as we know, a “coup” is the opposite of “legitimacy,” and “breaking the coup” is a synonym of the latter. Therefore, the total use of the words legitimacy, breaking, terminating and rejecting the coup amounts to 54. As such, the Muslim Brotherhood succeeded in reviving Morsi’s rhetoric in a new form, yet without Morsi, since the statement totally avoided any mention of the ousted president and neglected the demand for his reinstatement.

The statement reiterated the necessity of achieving the aspirations of the revolution, despite the fact that many revolutionaries perceive the Muslim Brotherhood as an enemy to the revolution. According to them, the Brotherhood has betrayed the revolution, prevented it from reaching power and exploited the blood of martyrs to its advantage. At first, as announced by Essam el-Erian, the Muslim Brotherhood refused to take part in the revolution. Four days after its eruption, members of the Brotherhood took to the streets for one apparent reason: to use their participation as leverage. They soon offered their withdrawal in secret negotiations with Omar Suleiman two days after their belated participation. This was done in order to yield political gains in terms of releasing prisoners, including Khairat al-Shater, and to be allowed to form a legitimate political party, apparently while maintaining their secret organization, in exchange for withdrawing from the square and agreeing that Suleiman stay as "acting president" until his official election the following September.

When Hosni Mubarak and Suleiman left the scene, the Brotherhood, this time with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), used its early preparedness to abort the revolution as a sign of its loyalty and willingness to cooperate. It tried to exploit this event and ride the wave of the revolution. It agreed with the military council to be tasked with amending the 1971 constitution under the pretext that it has more experience and is far more organized, even claiming to have control of the square. The council discovered that these claims were false starting with the protest of May 27, 2011, which was boycotted by the Muslim Brotherhood, who called it the "Friday of Betrayal." Practically, the Muslim Brotherhood controlled the drawing of a corrupt road map, creating a fake legitimacy in order to carry out their “tamkeen,” or “empowerment,” enterprise. The Muslim Brotherhood used the crooked road map to achieve maximum  gains for itself, craft a constitution matching its ideology and grab all power while Brotherhoodizing the state and its institutions.