Appealing for unity after the controversial ratification of
a draft constitution in December 2012, President Morsi of Egypt pledged in a
televised address to respect the one-third of the electorate that had voted
against the proposed constitution. He claimed that “active patriotic opposition”
should not annoy the president or the people in a democracy. I contend that the
office of president should not be of the sort that would have partisan
opposition, ideally at least. That is to say, presiding means safeguarding the
process itself, as well as the good of the whole, rather than pushing a
partisan agenda. That Morsi was on record in support of the partisan-drafted
proposal undercut his role as presider in chief. Given the innate instability
of a nascent democracy, the role for a presider “above the fray” was
particularly valuable in Egypt at the time. Morsi fell short in this regard,
and thus put the fragile democracy at risk.
The full essay is at "Morsi as Partisan."
