Since no one is standing on their positions and since contradiction in stances according to interests is the distinguishing feature of the majority of forces and figures now active on the political stage in Egypt, reaching common grounds in order to overcome the violent crisis the country is going through becomes extremely difficult. And since the agreements or understandings reached are always temporary, crises go by without being solved, even if some believe them to have been overcome. The matter is not limited to a particular group, party, movement, council or presidential candidate, but has rather become like a virus that has “struck" at the very fabric of political work and corrupted it, its traces reaching the process of rebuilding the state and achieving the bases of the slogans that erupted during the Revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood rejected the move by the Military Council to issue a complementary Constitutional Declaration defining the powers of the next president, as the scheduled date for the second round of presidential elections drew near, and it seemed that the president would be taking his constitutional oath of office without knowing what his powers are, as a result of the slowness, procrastination, obstacles being placed and delay in drafting a new constitution for the country, or even in agreeing over the formation of the constitutive assembly that would draft the articles of the constitution. At the same time, the Muslim Brotherhood failed to reach an agreement with secular political forces over the composition of the assembly, and has thus appeared to be intentionally placing obstacles to the completion of the constitution and to refuse to allow the crisis to be solved, even temporarily. The Military Council itself, which is now rushing through the steps to completing the constitution, is the same council whose performance has been characterized throughout the transitional period by slowness or procrastination, leading it to miss numerous opportunities which, had they been seized, would not have resulted in the situation being faced today. Secular forces, for their part, have become divided between reluctantly declaring their support for either the Muslim Brotherhood candidate in the presidential elections, Doctor Mohamed Morsi, or his opponent, Marshal Ahmed Shafik, out of obligation, to spite the Muslim Brotherhood or in order to humor the crowds gathered in public squares publicly while striking bargains behind the scenes – thus placing one foot on each side of the rift, knowing that their division since the day Mubarak stepped down has been one of the main reasons for their weakness and for their Islamist rivals prevailing over them in every field or at every election. The candidates to the presidency who waged the first round of elections and lost have returned to reject the second round, despite the fact that it will be held on the basis of the same factors under which the first round in which they failed was held, and have thus seemed as if they were exploiting the public square for their own ends or pretending to agree with those gathered in it without any conviction. They promoted the idea of a civilian presidential council, and when it appeared that the idea was unrealistic and impossible to implement, not to mention lacking consensus over it to begin with, they started to elude it or to lay the blame for it on one another!! They thus appeared like power-seekers, not revolutionary figures. They themselves had sought to compete against Muslim Brotherhood candidate Morsi, whom they support in the second round, despite the fact that they had in the first place refused to agree over some of them conceding to one of them in the first round, and had each clung to not having anyone compete against them. At every stage, each side would always have their own argument, which they believe to be logical, and their supporters would endorse it and promote their ideas and mobilize for them in public squares or ballot boxes. And if their positions were to change, they would always also have reasons to elude or evade their pledges or promises. On the whole, there does not seem to be an agreement in sight, except as a result of pressures or out of interest, or in order to evade a particular stance that would not allow the space for blackmail or provocation, and in either case, the distance is growing between the political elite and the street, and between what goes on behind closed doors and what goes on in public squares, which portends a term in office for the next president during which the problems of the transitional period will not be resolved but rather become entrenched. The fear is that they would increase to such a degree as to make them impossible to overcome, thus increasing the formula of citizens who fueled the Revolution then left for the elite in power, with influence on power or desiring power vast spaces to move, tear down the ruins of the former regime and lay the foundations of a modern state – only to discover that they had themselves become the rubble of the Revolution, over which all those party to the political game have tried to climb in order to achieve their interests.
