THESE are sad days for Egypt. Its year-long struggle to have a better system of government has been dashed to the ground with the swearing-in of Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi as president.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the Taliban in disguise. The members of the party may wear western clothes and have shorter beards, but deep in their hearts they are as fanatic as the Taliban. I know this because I have rubbed shoulders with a lot of their sympathisers during my long stay in an Arab country.

From the very start of its movement, I have never been sure of its success. If you look at the recent history of the country, the Egyptians have never made a right choice.

Let us for a moment look at their defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 war. After the Israeli army made Gamal Nasser’s forces bite the dust in less than a week, Nasser accepted responsibility and announced his resignation. He had hardly finished reading his prepared statement on the radio when millions of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo, shouting ‘Nasser, Nasser come back, we love you.’

The Egyptians as a nation are emotional people. They can be easily manipulated by a cunning player like Mursi. For almost six decades, three military dictators have ridden them roughshod and they have been very thankful for that all along, until the Tunisians rose up against their own dictator.

Only then they realised that they have been taken for a ride for so many years and they were not aware of it. But this late knowledge hasn’t helped them much and another shrewd bunch of manipulators have been waiting in an ambush and there everything has ended up in zilch.

MEHBOOB ALAM Kharian