While Obama’s State Department pressures Egypt to bring the Muslim Brotherhood into the new government while denouncing Morsi’s overthrow as a coup, Bassem Youssef, Egypt’s Jon Stewart, has a timely reminder of what the alternative to removing to Morsi would have been.
At a certain moment, the president said the historic Egyptian code word “De Lesseps.” But he didn’t say it like late president Gamal Abdel Nasser did, who used it as a code word to launch a military operation to nationalize the Suez Canal. He said it in a different way. He said it in four words that inflamed the audiences’ fervour. He said: “A year is enough!”And that phrase ended up cutting the other way as the opposition mobilized, seeing little choice but to either bring down Morsi or end up in prison like Erdogan’s political opponents in Turkey.
These words were enough to make the audience go wild. “A year is enough,” it’s been finally said! This good president will be silent no more! “A year is enough” my dears! You’ve joked about me for a long time, but this is enough! I will forgive no more.
The president’s supporters clapped and cheered. Then they began screaming their favorite chants “purge, purge.” It’s this same chant that was repeated during all of the president’s popular conferences – “the people want to purge the media.” I now remember the angry faces who in previous conferences requested the president to begin flushing the “puging”. But he would signal with his hand to calm them and say we things like how should be patient with one another and how we should give eachother chances. But this time, “a year is enough” meant there would be no second chances.
You can argue that these speeches only have aims of appeasing the crowds. But hours afterwards, threatening messages were sent out from the ministry of investment, headed by a Brotherhood minister, to private TV channels. They were threatened of being shut down if they continue to criticize the president.
So, the president meant it, “one year is enough.”
We now know that there was a list of 21 media figures and politicians, including myself, that were to be targeted and arrested.
So, the president meant it, “one year is enough.”
To those who dream of co-existence, how do you co-exist with he who wants to raise arms in your face and with he who considers killing you and imprisoning you or shutting down your media outlet as a victory for Islam?
To the Islamist who is weeping over democracy, you have usurped democracy. You spawned an unjust majority acting with superiority in the name of religion. You requested your president to shut down channels, besiege judicial institutions, torture those opposing your president at the Ittihadiya presidential palace. And you terrified a Coptic engineer who could not utter his name so his religion wouldn’t be figured out. You cheered for insulting the Shiites and did not care that they were killed. And in the end, you were going to overlook shutting down private channels because you would have considered that as a prevention of strife, a victory for Islam, an elimination of corruption and a response to the immortal chant “purge, purge the media.”
Therefore, after we finish our debates, remember how the situation will be if we had chosen the alternative truth and the parallel universe.
My dear reader, in the parallel world, you won’t read this article because its writer will either be imprisoned or killed. You will switch on your TV to watch Misr 25 broadcasting live footage of the burning studios of private TV channels. The people would be chanting “it’s done, the people have purged the media.” Protesters would be raising banners that will immortalize the president’s famous sentence: “one year is enough.”
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