Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi looked desperate on Wednesday night as he delivered his 160-minute speech, marking the first anniversary of his election as the first elected president in his country’s history. The speech itself was virtually a surreal piece of defensive rhetoric filled with conspiracy theories and unrealistic promises.
Egyptians had expected their president to call for reconciliation amid ongoing clashes between supporters of Mursi’s ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the supporters of opposition factions. The opposition has been calling upon the president to either step down or call for early elections due to the rapid deterioration in the economy and security conditions and the rise in sectarian tensions.
Mursi’s opponents argue that the slump of economic and social indicators and the decline of Egypt’s regional stature were a result of the president’s incompetence and the focus of his party, the Brotherhood, on dominating the state instead of trying to rebuild it.
But the Egyptians, along with millions of Arabs, who stayed up late to listen to the leader of the largest Arab country addressing his nation, were disappointed. Instead of rallying the people around the common cause of rebuilding Egypt, he was defiant to the point of arrogance.
He accused everybody of trying to undermine his authority. The senior judges are corrupt, he said; the opposition leaders are paid agents; the media is owned by corrupt business people who are out to get him. He sounded unpresidential as he mentioned names of judges, politicians and businessmen, accusing them of corruption on national television. People wondered if he had solid evidence against those people why didn’t he order their prosecution instead of slandering citizens live on air.
The desperate speech was obviously Mursi’s last card to fend off the upcoming demonstrations on Sunday. Egyptians expect the demonstrations to be bigger than the one which overthrew the Hosni Mubarak regime. Delivering his speech, Mursi looked much more vulnerable than Mubarak did on the eve of his departure.
