EGYPTIAN voters have approved a new constitution by 98.1 per cent, in a turn out of 36.8 per cent of those eligible to vote. Millions of Mursi supporters boycotted the poll.
This result is being presented as the overwhelming popular endorsement of the overthrow of the Mursi regime by the army, as well as being a popular call for army commander Sisi to be the next President of Egypt.
In the previous vote which decided that Mursi should be president of Egypt there was a 33% turnout, with millions also abstaining, because they could see that the election was being rigged by the army and the state to ensure that Mursi won.
He did win and then appointed Sisi and his circle of officers as the new army leadership, a move that was also welcomed by the US president.
Mursi then proceeded to rule and was met by a massive mobilisation of the working class and the poor who took to the streets as soon as they felt the policy results of the new leader. He banned some trade unions, attacked democratic rights and allowed massive price rises.
Some 18 millions of the working class and the poor took to the streets and as the movement developed into a socialist revolution, there was only one thing to do as far as the Egyptian ruling class was concerned. This was for the same officers who had been appointed army commanders by Mursi to overthrow him in a military coup, and put him on trial.
The US president and his men then had a problem as they decided that as democrats they could not support a coup. The way out was that they decided that the overthrow of Mursi by the army did not constitute a coup.
The US called for reconciliation. But there could be no reconciliation and Mursi is heading for the gallows, with the blessings of the democratic West.
The essence of the matter is that Egyptian capitalism has come far too late on the scene. It cannot follow in the path of the European revolutions that ended feudal rule, and swept feudal practices away and brought in democratic rights, the rights of the individual etc.
Egyptian capitalism can only function at bayonet point, and those like Mursi who disappointed the revolution, had to face a movement of many millions almost overnight.
The only form of capitalist rule to be had in Egypt is the rule of the army. Mursi, who tried to ignore this rule, is now on the way to the gallows.
Sisi will now declare that the people love him, all 38% of them, and are desperate that he should be president.
Once established he will try to put the trade unions and the youth back into handcuffs, and then carry out the orders of US imperialism in the region. The only role that he is fit to play is that of a lackey of US imperialism, which finances the Egyptian army to the tune of several billion dollars a year.
He will have to uphold the Sadat signed treaty with Israel and take action to force the Palestinians into accepting what little the Israelis are prepared to offer them.
The Egyptian ruling class’s special responsibility will be the chastisement of the people of Gaza and taking action against the militant Hamas movement, to try to force the Palestinian people to accept Egyptian troops in Gaza and Israeli troops on the Jordan border, to police the settlement that Israel and the US have in mind.
The only way forward for the Egyptian workers is to build up a revolutionary party, a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, that will lead the working class, and win over the vast majority of the rural population for a socialist revolution in Egypt, to smash Egyptian capitalism and bring in a workers and small farmers government.
It is this Egyptian socialist revolution, following the defeat of imperialism in Syria, that will revolutionise the Middle East, drive out imperialism and Zionism and establish an independent Palestinian state as part of a Socialist United States of the Middle East.
This is the only way forward for all of the people of the region, Arabs, Christians and Jews.
