Opponents of similar strength in Egypt

Uncompromising opponents of roughly equal strength is a recipe for political and social instability and this has become the condition for the people of Egypt. Removing the former ruler, President Hosi Mubarak, was the easy part. The establishment of a new government is harder, as Carl Leiden and Karl M. Schmitt, authors of The Politics of Violence: Revolution in the Modern World, point out. Political life has become difficult because the two main political groupings are becoming more and more clearly distrustful of each other and are mutually exclusive. These groups are President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist allies opposed by National Salvation Front, co-ordinated by Mohamed El Baradei, the former UN diplomat. Their confrontations are witnessed on Egypt’s streets daily. Liberal Democracy is a fragile form of government. Egyptian politics does not really embody some of the conditions needed for liberal democracy to succeed, as Gilbert Pleuger points out in the section, ‘The Democrat’s Society and Its Members’ of his exploration of Liberal Democracy†; namely a tolerance of other people’s point of view and the absence of unassimilable minorities.

In the Sempringham office, there is money on the intervention of the Egyptian Army within two years. Unlike the police, the events of the last two years have barely affected their foundations and operation and they have kept, significantly, out of the public eye. To catch up on the issues look at [that is, search for] Q&A: Egypt constitutional crisis [12 December 2012] on the BBC Internet site.
† The Good History Students' Handbook, Sempringham, 1993, pp 134-6

Contributor: Geoff Williams. Sempringham [ehistory.org.uk] eLearning Office.