Mohamed Morsi and the Failure of the Attempt of Regime Change in Egypt

Abstract

On June 17, 2019 former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was imprisoned since 2013,  got sick during his court hearing and soon passed  away – he was the subject of multiple court  proceedings, and was on charges of espionage just  before his death. Mohamed Morsi held Egypt’s  presidency for barely a year in 2012–2013, but his rise  to power and then his fall earned him a distinguished place the history of Egypt, as he ran on  elections with the promise of introducing Islamic  democracy and became the first democratically  elected president of the country. The decisions after  his inauguration outlined the establishment of a  centralised Islamist regime, which led to his removal,  then to his imprisonment and to the failure of  Egypt’s initially democratic regime change attempt.  This analysis summarises the main events of the  Egyptian transitional period after 2011, following the  removal of former president Hosni Mubarak, and the  year of Mohamed Morsi’s rule, as well as the reasons  for his political failure. His fall was not only  the result of Morsi’s misjudgment of the situation  and his wrong political decisions, but the peculiarities  of the Egyptian political system and the  Muslim Brotherhood’s political, organisational and  ideological inflexibility also contributed to this tragic  end.