In Some Parts of Egypt, Bad Times Remained Bad By KAREEM FAHIM Published: July 12, 2013 FAYOUM, Egypt — In the year that he led Egypt, Mohamed Morsi brought no relief to this oasis town, crisscrossed by dirty canals and desperate for the government’s help. But now that Mr. Morsi has been ousted, Ali Sayed, an activist who joined the effort to topple him, said he felt apprehension more than any sense of possibility. The army had taken control of the governor’s office, and the Muslim Brotherhood, Fayoum’s most powerful political movement, was wounded but undefeated. The influence of ultraconservative Islamists was growing. And men who served Egypt’s previous authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, were plotting their return to public life. Mr. Sayed’s vision of Egypt’s future was blocked, with powerful, decades-old political forces standing in the way. Millions of people had marched for change, but Fayoum, like Egypt, was still choking on the past. “We are going back to the same problems,” Mr. Sayed said. As the holy month of Ramadan started this week, the downtown market stalls on Mustafa Kamel Street filled with shoppers, and on the city’s lush outskirts, farmers tended sesame and other summer crops. Routine, more than any resolution to Egypt’s political crisis, has restored a sense of calm here, after weeks of protests, clashes and death. In Fayoum, as in the rest of Egypt, frustrated expectations fueled the violence and the anger. For many here in one of Egypt’s most impoverished districts, about 80 miles southwest of Cairo, the privations of the Mubarak era, like water shortages and joblessness, never eased. Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood, who attracted overwhelming support from voters in Fayoum, a stronghold for Islamists, were unable to deliver the “renaissance” they promised. “Everything got more expensive,” said Essam el-Kholi, 45, sitting with friends in a downtown cafe. “We couldn’t find gas. Unemployment increased.” “Under them, it was chaos,” Mr. Kholi, who works in insurance, said. For the moment, there was nothing to look forward to. “Everything is on hold,” he said. The clashes here between Mr. Morsi’s supporters and opponents started a few weeks before Mr. Morsi’s ouster, leaving at least two people dead, including a 16-year-old boy. After the president’s fall, looters raided the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party. The Brotherhood governor was replaced, though it was not clear how: at his office, an aide said he had simply failed to show up for work one day. In the days after Mr. Morsi’s ouster, hundreds of Brotherhood members left the city for Cairo, on dozens of buses, to participate in the protests calling for Mr. Morsi to be released from army custody and restored as president. Hamdy Taha, a Brotherhood member who served in Parliament, stayed behind. In an interview in one of the group’s offices, under a dim fluorescent light, he said that “thugs, backed by the police,” had attacked the Brotherhood and its supporters. He dismissed the criticisms of the Brotherhood’s record, saying the organization had worked “day and night to serve the people.” And he reacted with defiance when asked to provide evidence of the government’s accomplishments in Fayoum, saying, “Now is not the time to evaluate.” Pressed on the matter, he said that fuel prices had dropped and that the quality of bread had improved. Other government plans for the area had been cut short by the “military coup,” he said. “One week of army rule has been much worse than Morsi’s rule,” he said, adding that he expected to be served with an arrest warrant, like many of the top Brotherhood leaders, at any time. As Mr. Taha pondered the end of his career, Mohamed Hashem, another former member of Parliament, talked about resurrection. As a loyal backer of Mr. Mubarak, and a former member of his governing National Democratic Party, he had not dared to show up at the protests against Mr. Morsi, for fear of tainting a movement whose aims he supported with unmistakable glee. “I didn’t want to steal the show,” he said. The Brotherhood, he said, had lacked the political awareness to rule. Mr. Morsi’s administration had been “much, much worse” than the government of Mr. Mubarak, Mr. Hashem said. He seemed particularly incensed that the Brotherhood had worked to build its own network of power in Fayoum, eclipsing the notorious patronage system built by Mr. Mubarak. Sitting in a small office where, he said, he had never stopped providing services for Fayoum’s citizens, Mr. Hashem said he would run for office again if the law allowed — and if doing so would not cause violence in the city. “I’d love to,” he said. The possible re-emergence of Mubarak loyalists in Fayoum troubled Mr. Sayed, the anti-Morsi activist, who said he had refused Mr. Hashem’s offers of help during the campaign to oust the president. As a member of prominent youth movements, April 6 and Tamarrod, he had worked with his colleagues to help unseat two presidents. But they were still struggling to shift Egypt’s stubborn politics. One battle had suddenly become many: now Mr. Sayed was focused on purging Brotherhood members from professional syndicates, banning religious parties and stopping the rise of former Mubarak cronies. Among a group of farmers on the outskirts of Fayoum, the future seemed just as unsettled, and Mr. Morsi’s legacy was still hard to see. Their wheat crop had fetched higher prices over the last year, but fertilizer was still too expensive, and there was no security in the area. And although he was gone, Mr. Morsi continued to represent a fundamental change in Egypt that had nothing to do with the farmers’ livelihoods or his government’s woeful record. Mr. Morsi’s election, now undone, still meant the possibility of a break with the past. “He was different from those that came before,” said Shaaban Abdel-Razek, one of the farmers. “He wasn’t from the military. He was Islamic. He was something new.”
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 05:34:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015