Hacker News Reader

Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

    The results of that election were thrown out the window

Might be good to mention the result of that election were Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood (the originator of many jihadist movements like Al-Qaeda).

View on HN

The result was definitely unfortunate. He was a neoliberal that was friendly to Israel, China, and even the Iran (to the dismay of the Brotherhood). He only won by about 4 percentage points. Definitely not what I would've wanted for Egypt (I don't think Egypt needed to further the failed neoliberal project) but it was a democratic election nonetheless.

And that vague connection justifies what exactly ?

The parent correctly noted that the elected president represented ideology with ideals of is violent theocracy, and he almost immediately started powergrabbing, trying to gain non-supervised judicial and legislative powers in addition to executive. How vague is that? I don't know, to me it looks rather clear that this was a path from one authoritarianism to another.

Mohamed Morsi, far from a violent theocrat, was actually a neoliberal. Egypt, being 90-95% Muslim, ofc would take inspiration from Islamic law principles. Morsi was democratically elected and sought to maintain that democracy unlike that authoritarian that replaced him.

The Brookings Institute even rated him with the Polity Index (which goes from -10 to +10 with -10 being autocratic and +10 being democratic) and concluded he got between a 2 and a 4.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/was-mohammed-morsi-really...

Notably, unlike the current US-backed regime, he did not repress or imprison opponents.

I'm obviously not a fan of either leaders but it's absurd to suggest he did anything that justified ending a democracy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com