THE leading group representing the Egyptian bourgeoisie, around President Mursi, who is known as Mubarak with a beard, has just been massively shocked by the Egyptian working class and its struggle for basic democratic rights and socialism.
The trade unions insist that they will not allow the leaders of the unions to be appointed by the presidency, and want at least 50 per cent representation for workers and the rural poor in any new parliament. They completely oppose Mursi decreeing himself absolute powers, and took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to stop Mursi in his tracks.
The workers are now insisting that the December 15 referendum to impose a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired constitution must be be cancelled.
Mursi, having assisted US imperialism in negotiating a truce between the Palestinians in Gaza and Israel and, no doubt, encouraged by President Obama who is seeking to rule the Middle East and the Gulf through agreements with Islamic movements, had thought that his hour had struck, as he advanced to establish his dictatorship by decree.
The power and determination of the Egyptian workers who would not allow walls or tanks to stop them besieging the presidential palace has driven Mursi back.
On 21 November he decreed absolutism, and as late as last Thursday showed no willingness to give up these absolute powers. The army was brought out with its tanks, barbed wire and concrete blocks around the presidential palace to defend him.
However, by Saturday morning, with President Obama fearing the worst, a presenter on Egyptian state-owned Channel One read out a statement by the military spokesperson of the Egyptian Armed Forces.
The statement said: ‘The Egyptian Armed Forces have been following with increasing sorrow and concern the developments of the current situation and the divisions it led to which resulted in sorrowful events that left deaths and injuries. These divisions warn of grave dangers if they continue as they might serve a blow to pillars of the Egyptian state and its national security.’
The statement stressed: ‘Dialogue is the best and only way to reach an agreement that achieves the interests of the homeland and the citizens. Other than that will take us in a dark tunnel and catastrophic results and this is something we will not allow.’
It added that, ‘The military establishment always sides with the great Egyptian people and is keen on their unity … Within this frame we support the national dialogue and the serious and sincere democratic route in tackling issues and points of difference to reach an agreement that brings together all spectra of the homeland.’
It concluded: ‘Yet for those differences to escalate and reach conflict or struggle is a matter we should all avoid and seek to overcome as a basis for understanding among all partners in the homeland.
‘Failure to reach agreement and the continuation of conflict is not in the favour of any side and the entire homeland will pay the price.’
Following the refusal of the army to open fire on the masses, Nile News TV interrupted its programmes at 2158 gmt on Saturday to relay live a statement issued by the Egyptian president in which he decided to ‘cancel the constitutional declaration issued on 21 November 2012 as from today’ but that the referendum would continue.
Workers are now on the streets demanding that the referendum be cancelled. The revolution is continuing to develop, and bearing witness to the truth of Trotsky’s position. This was that the working class mobilising the rural poor, would have to carry out the democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution, since the bourgeoisie was unable to do so, before having to go over to socialist measures.
This would entail establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on the alliance between the working class and the rural poor.
What the workers of Egypt require is the establishment of a Bolshevik Party, a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, to lead their struggle forward to victory as part of the world socialist revolution.
