Plus ça change in Cairo

Don’t expect Cairo to become Kabul now that the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohammed Mursi, has been sworn into power earlier today. There are real fears, of course, about the future of Egypt under an Islamist president and it’s foolish to whitewash Mursi as either moderate or benign. The Muslim Brotherhood is a deeply reactionary and dangerous group, but Mursi will find it extremely difficult to implement the more radical aspects of his agenda.  

Officially, the Brotherhood has said it will respect all existing treaties – a subtle attempt to placate fears about Egypt’s future relations with Israel. Yet, when Mursi’s candidature was announced one of the clerics invited to launch his campaign promised that ‘millions of martyrs’ would be marching to Jerusalem, and warned that jihadists would soon ‘banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews’. Palestine was a cornerstone of the Brotherhood’s campaign and with strong institutional links to Hamas, it’s no surprise that since Mursi’s victory was confirmed last week more than 60 rockets have been fired into southern Israel from Gaza.

It’s not just Egypt’s neighbours that Mursi is setting himself against. Just last night he also promised to free Omar Abdel-Rahman, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing currently serving a life sentence in the United States. Osama bin Laden would complete the mission he began eight years later on 9/11.

This sabre-rattling was to be expected, directed against the traditional figureheads of Islamist enmity: America and Israel. But capability and intent are two very different things.

Egypt’s immediate future has been on display in Cairo during the last two weeks. The judge presiding over Mursi’s inauguration today, Farouk Sultan, was a onetime ally of Mubarak who first cut his teeth in Egypt’s notoriously draconian military courts – where Egypt’s Islamists were previously tried. Indeed, the Brotherhood’s most famous son, Sayyid Qutb, was sentenced to death by those very courts in 1966.

Even before Mursi could take power, Sultan moved to curb his powers. Cairo’s constitutional court dissolved most of the lower chamber of parliament which was dominated by Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood. In practice, this means power continues to rest with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) – the traditional repository of authority in Egypt.

Mursi may now be the Egyptian Republic’s fifth president (and the first civilian to occupy that post), but the army will retain responsibility for lawmaking, the budget, writing the new constitution and, perhaps most significantly, will be the only body capable of taking Egypt to war. Mohammed Tantawi, who leads the SCAF, will also be the defence minister.

So Mursi finds himself hemmed in with little real power and surrounded by Mubarak-era appointees who are deeply hostile to Islamist ambitions. Of course, the Brotherhood won’t be tamed easily. In defiance of l’ancien regime, Mursi took to Tahrir Square last night and recited the oath of office ahead of time, before a massive crowd of supporters. ‘You are the only source of authority,’ he told them. The unspoken corollary is obvious.

This is the state of Egypt’s democracy today, like the fruit of the Medlar, it turned rotten before it was ripe. Mubarak may have fallen after just eighteen days, but more than a year later, the system he created is far from dismantled. The remnants of his administration, like the restored Bourbon’s of whom it was said they had learned nothing and regretted even less, remain in place.

Mursi’s election is largely cosmetic, inheriting a neutered and impotent office. The conflicts he’s most likely to oversee are those between the Brotherhood and Mubarak’s men.