It is only natural for President Mohamed Morsi to face fierce opposition from other political forces that disagree with his ideas, his principles and his goals. And it is only logical for the President, and with him the institution of the Presidency, to exert efforts towards alleviating pressures from opposition forces, especially since Egyptians after the Revolution have become bolder, more enthusiastic and more ambitious, and since taking to the street to express their opinion has become part of a nearly daily culture. It is also true that there are some on the lookout for the President's mistakes, from among some who oppose him who are quite skilled at probing every word he speaks, every behavior he engages in and every decision he issues – which always places him under the spotlight and makes of him a target for every camera, microphone or pen. And it is quite evident for all the followers, devotees and supporters of the former regime to be against Morsi, his presidency and his Brotherhood, finding joy in his failures and not denying their efforts to thwart him. Certainly Morsi himself had, when he took the step of nominating himself as candidate to compete for the presidential seat, expected that the situation from the side of those who oppose him across the spectrum would be like this, especially as he belongs to a political movement with a long history and a great deal of experience, one that has faced colossal challenges against successive ruling regimes, with which it has sometimes maintained a state of truce, but most often clashed. He too has those who oppose him from the Left and from the Right, who refuse to mix religion with politics, even if he swears that he is not doing so. The President, along with his party and his Brotherhood, can, and in fact excels at, gathering crowds in public squares or even sports stadiums, but he cannot silence the voices of others or negate their deeds through exceptional measures or through his security apparatus, for example. Indeed, times have changed, and Egyptians today are no longer the same Egyptians who used to accept anything former regimes would impose on them. They have risen up in Revolution and consider themselves to have been liberated from the legacy of the past. Yet certainly he can, or has the duty to, avoid always giving them opportunities to target his mistakes, in a manner that affects his ability to work, exhausts the institution of the presidency, and places it much too often in positions of reacting or denying, and of looking for solutions to crises provoked by the President's men, or crises they have gotten themselves or the President into. It is strange that most of the problems the institution of the presidency, and in fact the Egyptian state, has suffered from over the past three months and a half were not caused by those opposed to the President, but only exploited by them. Indeed, most of them have arisen as a result of the poor performance of “the President's men", those closest to him in the institution of the presidency, as a reaction to unsound behavior or illogical decisions (protesting at the US Embassy and demonstrating on Tahrir Square last Friday being two blatant examples of this), or as a result of statements issued by prominent figures affiliated with him, either from his team of advisers or from among prominent figures of his party and of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi now needs – after the crisis surrounding the Attorney-General and the violence that occurred in Tahrir Square, and before that the decision to reconvene the dissolved People's Assembly then its retraction, and between the two a great many scenes that have placed the President under fire from those who oppose him – is to reconsider his working team, as well as the team of his supporters, this after admitting that there is a problem that needs to be addressed and solved. If, on the other hand, he believes that there is no problem there, and that these are all allegations, claims or stances being provoked by his rivals, then his future in power during his constitutional mandate will be rife with additional problems. The question remains, after the end of the crisis surrounding the Attorney-General, and in the background of all the events and incidents that preceded it: are the President's advisers turning into scapegoats for the mistakes of those in power or are they really the cause of these problems? Neither a negative nor a positive answer would be in the interest of the institution of the presidency. Indeed, everyone knows that most of them were stars on satellite television and nightly talk shows. And after they were selected to advise the President, they did not stop talking, and started mixing between official stances taken by the state and their own personal opinions. Some even exceeded their role of providing the President with advice and counsel to expressing official stances (one of them caused significant uproar after making the statement that Egypt was considering the option of sending troops to Syria). Here another question arises: are they being used as trial balloons or does the unrestrained desire among some of them to appear in the spotlight and to speak exceed the President's ability to rein them in? No one imposed his men on the President. In fact, he was the one who chose them, and he needs them to help him prepare the climate for managing the state and solving the people's problems, not to get him implicated and increase and complicate existing problems. Nor does the President need his supporters to come out in droves to support every decision he takes or to suggest that decisions he is going to take are intended to meet the demands of the masses. He needs them to realize that the President is now in power... and no longer in the opposition!
