Brotherhood’s intimidation of judges, media

INSULTS, threats, exclusion and the tendency to breaking the rules of political action have become attributes of the Muslim Brotherhood despite its short experience in government.
The party has confirmed everything that was said about it: Its fascism with a quest to have total control as well as the double standard of rhetoric. What they do is not what they pledge.
There is a strange indifference in these difficult times. A few days ago, President Muhammed Mursi spoke to Time magazine in a sweet tone about his admiration for the West, its films and its communities; of his commitment to the principles of election and the constitution, and passion for peace and reconciliation with Israel.
This was said while his men spoke with vulgarity against their fellow citizens, launched campaigns against the opposition parties and the media, who do not applaud them. Brotherhood demonstrators jammed the doors of the Constitutional Court, a week after Mursi’s speech, and he described those who were surrounding the Interior Ministry as thugs.
Egypt is in crisis. It is at a crossroads, in rugged terrain with some of it being very dangerous. The country cannot avoid the dark future unless President Mursi decides to be president of all Egyptians. To back down on his project which canceled the constitutional role of the judiciary and appointed himself as the only judge. His followers and imams of mosques shamelessly say that he is the caliph and the successor in Islam has the final say.
This is how the Brotherhood led people to judge them. Its membes are perceived as a group who cannot be trusted, and are power hungry. They forget that for 80 years they tried to reach government by force and failed miserably. Former leaders did not even give them an opportunity to participate. Until young people attacked Tahrir Square in the Jan. 25 revolution and brought down Mubarak’s rule. The Brotherhood shared in the sweet victory and proceeded to give them a taste of bad governing.
Now they have the presidency, and they head the government, even though they assured their rivals that they would not take over the job, and they are in the Shoura Council, but filling important positions did not slow down their greed, and hence they decided to write the constitution according to their vision. They targeted the judiciary because judges did not agree with all their demands. Founding members — 90 percent of whom are Brothers and Salafists, were given the task of rewriting the constitution, repaid the president by granting him absolute powers as well as the judiciary.
The ultimate goal to dominate the judiciary is because it is the door through which they will be able to issue verdicts, sanction their decisions, and allow their excesses to continue. Through the judiciary, the Brotherhood would be able to create disagreements in future elections to their favor. What the ousted President Hosni Mubarak tried to do in 30 years, President Mursi dared to do in his 30-minute speech.
He fired the attorney general, appointing a member of his group instead, and decided to oust judges whom he considered as mere employees. In fact, within the constitution, there is an article that gives him absolute authority over the powers of the judiciary.
As for the media, the battle is longer and harder because it does not work in favor of the president’s decisions in terms of the constitution. This forced the Brotherhood to attack media and journalists, calling them infidels and immoral, and later threatened them with penalties.
Because the Brotherhood were always in the opposition benches, it may not know that manipulating media or thwarting it, is virtually impossible today. Mubarak tried for years to muzzle his opponents and failed, and in the end surrendered. Indeed, the Brotherhood will discover that anti-media attacks will cost them everything they gained of sympathy and popularity.