Egypt’s Only Democratic Leader Helped Kill Its Democracy

In June 2012, I stood with hundreds of thousands of Mohamed Morsi’s supporters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where they prayed that the Egyptian military, still powerful behind the scenes, would allow a fair ballot count. Independent tallies suggested that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi had squeaked past the military’s preferred candidate in Egypt’s first-ever free presidential election—the only question was whether the vote would be rigged. “We will stay in this square until Morsi wins,” an engineer named Khaled told me.