TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

No one has benefited from the army’s decision to oust the country’s first democratically elected President – not the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters who took 51 per cent of the vote in the national elections, nor the celebrating mob who at best can conjure up 25 per cent at the ballot box.

Already, there is talk of putting in place a strong man, someone who will be able to deliver stability. And that may well be the best solution to prevent this nation from breaking apart.

For no election can ever be regarded as anything more than a sham, after what has just happened in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood must have known they were living on borrowed time, but not even in their worst nightmares could they have imagined that they would last just one year.

Egypt has taken a step back today – the journey to modernity championed by Arab intellectuals has succumbed to the power of the mob, that Arab Street that the West has so warned us all of.

Perhaps, intellectuals in the West are right – the Arab mind is not capable of understanding a process as brilliant, yet as nuanced as democracy.

It hasn’t worked in Iraq, and now it’s completely failed in Egypt.

No one forced the crowds out on the street, they came of their own accord, and they will have to live with the consequences of their actions which could reverberate for decades to come.

Egypt may never recover from the army’ s prehistoric actions.

And as a result, we may just seen the beginning of the break-up of this north African state.

(Pictured above – the head of Egypt’s army Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi on state TV announcing that the constitution had been suspended and that the chief justice of the constitutional court would take on Mr Morsi’s powers)