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The Kind of Substance You Need For Your Success

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Gift Gugu Mona

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“The most notable amendment is the alteration to Article 200, which describes the constitutional role of the military. This amendment extends the military’s duties to include the ‘protection of the constitution, democracy, the state and its secular nature, and personal freedoms.’ This phrase has radical implications, the most notable of which is that it paves the way for continued military intervention in politics, if and when it deems that the secular nature of that state, democracy or personal freedoms are threatened by an elected civilian government. This is very cynical, considering that the military autocracy has been the main violator of the freedoms mentioned in the amendment. In fact, this is the military’s option of last resort, in the event that popular pressure forces a free election and that a civilian government is elected. This is a very similar argument to the one made by the Algerian military on the eve of the coup in 1992, when elections won by F.I.S. were voided, triggering a bloody civil war that lasted the better part of a decade (Evans and John, 2007). Hidden in the language of the amendment is a very dangerous ideological imperative, which identifies the military with the ‘state’ rather than with the elected government of the day. It assumes that since the military is serving the ‘state’, then the military—and only the military—is able to defend the ‘state’ against the incompetence of civilians. In other words, the amendment assumes that the military’s supremacy over civilians is the natural order of things. This assumption is deeply rooted in the regime’s ideological construct, where the ‘state’ is imagined as an almost mythical entity that has to be protected against the folly of civilian politicians and the demands for democratization. In essence, the amendment turns the concept of popular sovereignty on its head, with the source of sovereignty transferred from the popular will to the military, as the ultimate guardian of the ‘state’. This entrenches a paternalistic attitude towards the citizenry, as incompetent simpletons who, in a moment of folly, might elect a government that could destroy the ‘state’. Finer identifies acceptance of civilian supremacy as one of the pre-conditions for restraining a military’s interventionist appetite (Finer, 2002). This is clearly not the case in Egypt, where prospective future coups now have a solid constitutional basis.” Chapter 2: The New Leviathan, pages 52-53”

DemocracyConstitutionDictatorshipDemocratizationPopular SovereigntyCoupAmendmentMilitarizationModern EgyptEl Sisi
Book:Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge
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“I am still actively engaged at the job I like best, which is working with authors and promoting them. But, at this time in my life I have made it a rule to cosset myself by refusing to spend my time on things I plain straight don't like. Our list is a distinguished one. We have managed to keep free of the current phenomenon of big-business publishing; the book stores and our own salesmen expect us to give them books we believe in.”

PublishingRejection LetterEditor Of Your BookFarrar
Book:Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do
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