Egypt : What Does "Democratically Elected" Mean?

In the current turmoil in Egypt, one phrase is often repeated in the media -- Mohammed Morsi is constantly referred to as Egypt's "first democratically elected president." The truth of that statement has not been analyzed or questioned, either by journalists or by their expert guests. ~~~~~ So, dear readers, let's put some facts around the assertion that Morsi was the first democratically elected Egyptian president. (1). The presidential election was held in Egypt on 23 and 24 May 2012. The runoff election was held on 16 and 17 June. The Moslem Brotherhood declared early on 18 June 2012 that its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, had won the election, which the Brotherhood characterized as the first victory of an Islamist as head of state in the Arab world. The 2012 election was the second presidential election in Egypt's history with more than one candidate, following the 2005 election, and the first presidential election after the 2011 Egyptian revolution during the Arab Spring. A few days after the Brotherhood's announcement, on 24 June 2012, Egypt's election commission certified that Moslem Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi had won Egypt's presidential runoff. Morsi won by a narrow margin over Ahmed Shafik, the final prime minister under deposed President Hosni Mubarak, the only other candidate left after most had been disqualified or had withdrawn under duress. The commission said Morsi took 51.7% of the vote versus 48.3% for Shafik. The total valid vote was 23,265,516 out of the 25,577,511 ballots cast. Turnout was 46.42% of registered voters. Abstentions were 27,324,510 or 53.58% of the 50,324,510 registered voters. FIRST CONCLUSION - while the election may have been democratic, more than half of Egypt's registered voters chose not to vote, meaning that Morsi actually received 24.9% of the possible votes available. To put it differently, 75% of Egyptians either did not vote for Morsi or abstained from voting at all. ~~~~~ (2). Following Morsi's election, the newly elected parliament set out to write a new constitution. The Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt was signed into law by President Morsi on 26 December 2012, after it was approved by the Constituent Assembly on 30 November 2012 and passed in a referendum held 15–22 December 2012 with 64% support in a turnout of 33% of eligible voters. It replaced the 2011 Provisional Constitution of Egypt, adopted in 2011 following the Egyptian revolution. The new constitution and the manner in which it was adopted were one focus of the violent 2012 Egyptian protests. Zaghoul el-Balshi, the general secretary of the commission overseeing the planned constitutional referendum, resigned in the wake of the protests. The constitution was written by an Islamist-dominated assembly that pushed through a draft over the objections of its liberal, secular, and Christian members, many of whom resigned from parliament in protest. The new constitution favored the goals of Morsi’s Moslem Brotherhood, which seeks to impose its Islamist ideology on moderate Moslems, secularists, and non-Moslem minorities. The constitution also protected the interests of the army by allowing it to retain control of its own budget and extensive business empire - favorable treatment that Morsi and the Brotherhood must have thought sufficient to co-opt the military, a tactic proven wrong by the military's support of the popular majority in the last week. Under the new constitution, women and religious minorities were the big losers. Article 2 stipulated that “the principles of Islamic Sharia” are the main source of legislation. This eroded the rights of women and non-Moslems, whom Sharia law treats as second-class citizens. More than 100,000 Coptic Christians have fled Egypt in the recent nine-month period due to rising sectarian attacks whipped up by Salafist Moslem fundamentalists. Egypt’s Christian minority, one of the largest in the Arab world, has been one of the big losers of the so-called “Arab Spring.” Egyptian Christians have been attacked and persecuted by Islamist extremists. SECOND CONCLUSION - President Morsi and the Moslem Brotherhood have overtly favored an Islamist political agenda that has discriminated against women and minorities. The new constitution also made peaceful political change impossible so that street protests were the only method available for political changes favored by the 70% of Egyptians who either voted against the new constitution or boycotted the constitutional ratification vote altogether. Indeed, after Morsi temporarily granted himself unlimited powers to "protect" the nation in late November 2012, and the power to legislate without judicial oversight or review of his acts, hundreds of thousands of protesters began demonstrating against him in the 2012 Egyptian protests. On 8 December 2012, Morsi annulled his decree which had expanded his presidential authority and removed judicial review of his decrees, an Islamist official said, but added that the effects of that declaration would stand. George Isaac of the Constitution Party said that Morsi’s declaration did not offer anything new, the National Salvation Front rejected it as an attempt to save face, and the 6 April Movement and Gamal Fahmi of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate said the new declaration failed to address the"fundamental" problem of the nature of the assembly that was tasked with drafting the constitution. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it is not difficult to see that Mohammed Morsi has never had the support of more than 25% of Egyptian voters. Because he and the Moslem Brotherhood pursued a very unpopular agenda and made it impossible for Egyptian citizens to politically counter-attack against that agenda, the rebellion that began on 30 June and led to the military ousting Morsi and suppressing the Brotherhood became inevitable. "Democratically elected" does not refer to the mere act of winning an election - it also requires a democratically elected legislature with sufficient power to balance presidential power. Egypt must achieve this balance before "democratically elected" can have any real meaning.