By now, even those with just a passing interest in Egyptian politics are aware that last Thursday (June 14), the Supreme Constitutional Court nullified the election of one-third of the seats in the People’s Assembly. According to the Court, the two different methods by which independent and party-affiliated candidates were elected — “first past the post” and proportional representation, respectively — were unconstitutional because they rendered the candidates unequal. The decision threw Egypt’s political arena into turmoil, but that paled in comparison to what happened next.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces stepped in and dissolved the parliament, a power it does not have, and vested itself with legislative responsibility. Twitter feeds and Facebook immediately lit up with cries of “coup” and lamentations over a lost revolution. Still, the military was not done. By Sunday, the officers followed up with an addendum to their March 2011 Constitutional Declaration that effectively subordinates the new Egyptian president to the SCAF.

Despite endless questions about what the military’s actions mean, it should be clear that Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and his commanders were doing everything they could to put Humpty Dumpty back together again while their constitutional decree was a hedge against the possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi would become Egypt’s next president, which now seems likely.

Through the uncertainty and instability of the last 16 months — much of which is the result of their own doing — the officers were never able to make a deal with Egypt’s other political actors that would secure the SCAF’s interests beyond the transition. This was a critical setback for Tantawi and his men. They are the descendants of the founders of a political order that was born in the throes of the early 1950s when the Free Officers battled to consolidate their power over the objections of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Left, liberals and even other members of the armed forces. The regime that ultimately came into being was rigged in favor of the military and its civilian collaborators. The SCAF could not let this order slip away because it is the key to the officer’s economic interests and, importantly, the military’s place as the ultimate source of power and authority in the political system.