The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters accuse us [the opposition] of laying in wait to pounce on President Morsi and of rushing to judge him without giving him a chance to perform his duties.
Their main argument is that we began opposing the president on the first day of his tenure without giving him enough time, but this reasoning is false because any president can be criticised on the first day of office based on his platform.
So, what if the elected president doesn’t actually have what amounts to a platform? Surely this wouldn’t take us five months to discover.
I read the election platform of Morsi and the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) which he led, but I was unable to find any information about the renaissance project.
The Brotherhood and their party (the FJP) tried to evade the predicament by declaring that the renaissance project would be written by the people, not the ruling party or the president. This is a ridiculous and fraudulent claim and the president and his party should be held accountable.
One of the basic functions of the state in modern times – especially in economically backwards societies – is to be several steps ahead of society as the engine for economic development that propels an economically backward and stagnant society forward. Waiting for society to be the engine and the state to follow is unheard of in the realm of economic development.
Are we too hasty in judging the president? A key criteria in evaluating presidents in respectable democratic countries, especially when the president heralds from a religious group that supposedly respects moral conduct and brands it in the conscience and consciousness of its cadres, is that he should be honest and upright – which were key characteristics of the prophet as a merchant.
Well before Morsi set foot in the presidential palace he issued flagrant lies: his official website claims that he worked for NASA – in an attempt to inflate his scientific expertise – but one discovers that he was never at NASA. So are we too hasty in calling him a liar?
The same biography also claims he has published several researches in world science journals in his field, but after wasting valuable hours of my time investigating Morsi’s scientific yield, I found nothing of the kind. And so, are we too hasty in calling him dishonest?
When Morsi sends a letter to Israel’s President Shimon Peres thanking him for an earlier letter Peres had sent congratulating him on his ascension to power and Morsi denies sending such a communiqué – but then Israeli newspapers publish the letter, forcing the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv to explain it is a protocol response – are we also being unfair to President Morsi when we call him a liar?
When Morsi appoints dozens of people as paid and unpaid – money here is irrelevant – advisers, and then time and time again it is discovered that these appointees had no role in shaping the president’s decisions, is this not an example of flagrant lying that no self-respecting person would do?
The president did not even bother to inform his advisers about his new decisions to save them the embarrassment of finding out about them through the media like everyone else. Only those who want him to shine at any cost allow the president to use them to polish his image and insinuate that he listens to and discusses expert opinions from all currents, even his opponents.
I think Morsi’s performance as presidential candidate and president for five months is enough to pass judgment that he is undeserving to be Egypt’s president after its glorious revolution. Anyone who wishes to wait longer to pass judgment can do that, but I have made up my mind and decided that the president is unworthy of his position.
We must put this crucial question to the people: should the president commit high treason – such as being caught red handed accepting money from enemy states – before holding him accountable, or are there other mistakes and crimes such as lying and deception that deserve prosecution and accountability because they are just as noxious as high treason? Or do these mistakes need new constitutional clauses? Or do our friends writing the new constitution assume that all of Egypt’s future leaders will come from Islamist ranks?
