Is Egypt's reform movement coming off the tracks?

The peaceful, non-sectarian and democratic nature of the “Arab Spring” in Egypt is being threatened because the country’s military is behaving in such a way that contradicted its earlier stance.

Early on in the movement, the army stayed on the side and permitted the movement to take its course, even as it takes on a life of its own. Tahrir Square, which the protesters used as their centre of gravity, resisted all kinds of attacks from pro-government thugs sent by a regime that was on its last legs.

But the protesters stayed their course and, 18 days later, the dictator Hosni Mubarak was gone. The country’s military saw the inevitable and had enough sense to predict the immediate future and did not intervene. It was this very quality that made the Egyptian uprising so influential, so important for the rest of the region. It set it apart from the armed confrontation that broke out in Libya, Yemen and Syria.

But what took place this past weekend threatens to ruin everything that the people-led uprising started. This past Sunday, the Egyptian army, along with its civilian thugs, attacked Coptic Christians who were peacefully protesting following arson attacks on their churches.

The violence resulted in the deaths of 26 people, with 500 injured. Several thousand members of the Coptic denomination, who make up about 10 per cent of Egypt’s population, took part in the protest march.

Tension started with civilians wielding sticks and stones. This was followed by a mobilisation of the military, whose vehicles deliberately drove over the protesters and fired upon them with machine-guns.

State-run media added fuel to the flames, employing sectarian language, saying the Copts had killed soldiers, and at one point urged Muslims to come out to defend the military.

But people were smarter than that; they could see through it all. In fact, some Muslims took to the streets and joined forces with the Christians. Footage of the incident was caught on camera and aired across the globe immediately.

A big setback for the ruling military council came on Tuesday when Finance Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, who also held the title of deputy prime minister, resigned in protest over the killings of the Coptic Christians. He accused the government of failing to provide security to the people, and urged an apology for the violence.

What was disturbing about this past Sunday was that it showed everything that is wrong with a military regime whose mismanagement of the country could ruin Egypt’s path to democracy. Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was supposed to be a transitional authority, from dictatorship to a democratically elected government. But SCAF appears to be buying time and more time.

If SCAF generals are reverting to the old tactics of Hosni Mubarak, they too, must be brought to justice.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf blamed the violence on a foreign conspiracy. And when he said the incident had “taken us back several steps”, many Egyptians took his remark as a way of saying the promised election will be postponed once again.

From the look of it, it appears that the 24 senior generals in the ruling council are about to sabotage the country’s transition to democracy for their own interest. These men have repeatedly said that they want to hand over power to civilians as soon as possible, but keep coming up with one excuse after another to stay on. They were supposed to complete the transition to civilian rule by last month. But now they are talking about lingering on for another year or longer. And the longer they stay, the greater the possibility of more tragic incidents such as those we have seen this past weekend.