And Morsi saw little point in trying — the fact that the Brotherhood had been on the winning side in every post-revolutionary election gave them an erroneous sense of their own invincibility. But by late May, they should have been worried.
By this point a significant proportion of the population had started to mobilise against them. A new campaign group, Tamarod, caught the imagination , and encouraged millions of Egyptians, many of whom had voted for Morsi, to sign a petition calling for early elections. Sensing their moment, the business elite, which controlled the media, launched a full-on decapitation strategy. Which came first may never be established, but amid an increasingly hysterical national conversation, the military also began to move behind the scenes.
Leaked recordings of conversations between top generals suggest that the army, supported by the Gulf monarchies, may have helped to fund Tamarod, the grass-roots anti-Morsi campaign.
On 29 June, our interview was delayed while Morsi negotiated with Sisi in the next-door room. The die may have been cast, but it had not yet come to a rest. Even after 30 June, when millions turned out to oppose him , negotiations continued. But as ever, the Brotherhood did not compromise.
Throughout this final fortnight, people such as Aboul Ghar feared that Morsi might make some gesture of reconciliation, and so avert the worst of public anger. Absolutely nothing. On 3 July, he was arrested along with his closest advisers. And so began the still-unfinished crackdown on all Brotherhood activity. But as ever in Egypt, there is no single, linear truth. It was the army who toppled Morsi, and whose leaders have since tried to stamp out dissent — Islamist and non-Islamist alike.
The head of the supreme court was made acting president. For much of July, Baradei and a team from the EU led negotiations with the Brotherhood, attempting to get them to quit their huge protest camp at Rabaa al-Adawiya in east Cairo before the hardliners dismantled it by force.
Public opposition to Morsi began building in November when, wishing to ensure that the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly could finish drafting a new constitution, the president issued a decree granting himself far-reaching powers.
Amid increasing unrest, Morsi issued a further decree authorising the armed forces to protect national institutions and polling places until a referendum on a draft constitution was held on 15 December Critics said that decree amounted to a form of martial law and clashes between Morsi's opponents and supporters left more than 50 people dead. Mass protests were held to mark the first anniversary of the day Morsi took office, and millions took to the streets across Egypt.
The military warned Morsi that it would intervene if he did not satisfy the public's demands within 48 hours. On the evening of 3 July, the army suspended the constitution and announced the formation of a technocratic interim government ahead of new presidential elections. Morsi denounced the action as a "coup". His arrest was ordered by then armed forces chief - and now president - Abdul Fattah al-Sisi - and he was taken by the army to an undisclosed location, and was not heard from for weeks.
His supporters took to the streets of Cairo, demanding his release and immediate return to power. The army responded by breaking up two protest camps in the capital by force on 14 August and arresting key Brotherhood figures. In an interview with the New York Times shortly after being elected, Morsi said it was up to Washington to repair its ties with Cairo and the rest of the Arab world. And he called for Washington to live up to its commitment of Palestinian self-rule. Please contact us for subscription options.
Related topics Egypt Mohammad Morsi. US, Egypt hold strategic dialogue in Washington. Some of the conspiracy theories would have been laughable had they not ended up on a list of court charges for which he would later face a possible death sentence.
And so his presidency came to an unceremonious end before it ever really began. But as his successor would soon realise, that brief hope has proven to be stubbornly hard to extinguish. Six years after the coup that overthrew Morsi, many Egyptians continue to perceive the current regime as illegitimate. By choosing to bury him in the dead of night, the regime has only succeeded in shining a light on the enduring tragedy of a nation.
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