Ian Black, Middle East editor The Guardian, Friday 23 November 2012 20.07 GMT
Morsi's power grab and brokering of Gaza ceasefire are just two
Egyptian protesters hold a banner depicting President Mohamed Morsi as a pharaoh during a demonstration over his presidential decrees. Photograph: Andre Pain/EPA
Mohamed Morsi has come a long way since he was derided as a "spare" when his name emerged as the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate for the Egyptian presidency following the withdrawal of a more charismatic candidate.
In the space of 24 hours this week the engineer-turned-politician has been praised internationally for brokering a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and excoriated at home as a "new pharaoh" who has seized dictatorial powers and betrayed the revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak last year.
It is not the first time Morsi has surprised friend and foe by combining deftness and ruthlessness – but always touching a raw nerve among those Egyptians who fear that, after all their hopes and sacrifices, they will end up being ruled by a "Mubarak with a beard".
Morsi was sworn in in July after a narrow election victory that was a triumph not only for democracy, but also for the long-banned Brotherhood, the world's oldest Islamist movement.
It was not supposed to happen that way. The original candidate of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party was Khairat al-Shater, a businessman who spent years in Mubarak's prisons but who was disqualified on a technicality. Morsi, by contrast, was a colourless backroom operator whose enemies waved tyres at his rallies to underline the "spare" jibe.
Still, in August he impressed many by outmanoeuvring the ageing generals who had dominated Egypt since forcing out Mubarak – and without a confrontation. Commentators called it Morsi's "night of power", an unmistakable reference to the Qur'an, which the Brotherhood calls "our constitution".
In September, Morsi was criticised for reacting slowly when demonstrators angered by an Islam phobic film stormed the US embassy in Cairo. The incident on the eve of his first official visit to Washington prompted Barack Obama's alarmingly tepid comment that Egypt was "not an ally but not an enemy". By comparison, the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's lavish praise over his Gaza performance must have sounded sweet.
Naturally enough, it is in the domestic arena where Morsi has faced his biggest challenges. The Islamists – including ultra-conservative Salafis who oppose the president – and their enemies are deadlocked, so the decision to impose a solution on old-regime judges looks likely to cause further trouble.
Pleasing populist gestures towards the "martyrs" of last year's uprising – on pensions and retrials for those who killed demonstrators – were "clearly aimed at appropriating revolutionary legitimacy and using it to strengthen the position of the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled presidency", said the analyst Hesham Sallam.
"There is an issue here about the balance of power between the Brotherhood and the nationalists and liberals, who appear unable to unify themselves," warned Abdallah Homouda, who writes for Egypt's leading independent newspaper, al-Masry al-Youm. "The fear is that will leave the Brotherhood in a dominant position."
Many say Morsi has acted clumsily compared with his sophisticated approach to the military in the summer.
"Morsi inherited a country with a great number of very serious problems that nobody could address in months or very possibly in years," said the commentator Elijah Zarwan. "He came to power at a time when Egypt and the region were in crisis. His handling of some of these issues, including the war in Gaza, was effective and even surprisingly adroit. In other cases he has made mistakes. His handling of the judiciary has been probably his biggest. It is very difficult to see how he can climb down."
Others say it is a question of how much support the president can command. "This is a move that might be pulled off by an overwhelmingly popular national leader," said Issandr El-Amrani, who blogs from Cairo as the Arabist. "But [it] goes a little too far for someone elected by only 51% of the electorate in an ever-more divided country."
