Had the decision of the Egyptian government for all commercial shops to close at 10 pm been issued with Egyptians living under normal circumstances, it would have met the support of broad segments of the population, the elite and the shop-owners themselves. Yet the prevailing state of rejection of this decision has come to reflect the extent to which the government often chooses the wrong timing to pass the right decisions. The issue is not just limited to the fact that the government apparatus is expected to be unable to implement it, seeing as it has failed in every confrontation with crowds of protesters, whether they are opposing a political stance or an administrative decision, or because the government is for example unable to provide a football tournament, and is preventing the return of the football league competition in order to avoid clashes with the public. The problem is also that this decision brings the country into a blazing crisis it would have been wise to overcome, had the matter been subject to study and research into its results and its effects both on the people and on the government. On the whole, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood does not seem greatly upset at the state of political polarization in society and the disagreements that have turned into conflicts between different parts of the political spectrum. Indeed, the Brotherhood believes the issue not to be so dangerous as to threaten the new system of state rule after the Revolution, and perhaps its members imagine that the passing of time will be sure to get rid of the legacy of the former regime still carried by opposition forces! The President of the country, Doctor Mohamed Morsi, along with his government and in the background the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), seems satisfied with the performance of the executive apparatus, and imagines that the majority of the people too are satisfied and thanking God for the blessings they are enjoying! And despite the fact that all parties to the government have admitted to the fact that there are difficulties, they also believe that the element of time will be sure to resolve them, that people's patience will not run out and that they will bear the situation until the country emerges from this bottleneck and the period of prosperity begins – keeping in mind that they are also convinced that the scenes of special interest protests and demonstrations in many public squares are merely movements, plans and “conspiracies" weaved by the remnants of the former regime, and with them revolutionary forces hostile to Islamists, aimed at thwarting the plans of the Islamists in power and to portray the Muslim Brotherhood in particular and Islamists in general as failures, knowing that some prominent Islamist figures have spoken of plans to promote the theory that Islamists are better at being in the opposition than at being in power! On the other hand, the forces opposed to the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood seem more preoccupied with the past and with settling scores with the Mubarak regime, as well as with fishing for the Brotherhood's mistakes and the behavior of other Islamists, than concerned with laying out plans for the future and looking for the most appropriate ways to deal with the present. It also seems that they sorely miss the presence of the military on the political scene and in power, as it had provided them with wide areas of movement on the ground, in the street as well as on satellite television! It had been giving them opportunities to be present on the scene by probing the military's mistakes and provoking it into political confrontations that the military would lose, by virtue of its lack of experience, or the weight of its task or of its mistakes. Secular forces believed this to be to their benefit, although it later proved to be beneficial to the Islamists at the end of the day. Indeed, secular forces continued to believe that their political victories over the Military Council would increase their popularity or their strength, only to discover that the more the grip of the military on power and on government weakened and left behind vacuum, the more the Islamists proved the most able and worthy to seize power and fill the vacuum! On the whole, the President, the government, the ruling party and the group which the President, the government and the party are affiliated to are giving those who oppose them one opportunity after another to do away with those in power and turn people against them. The issue this time is about “daily bread", and it has come before the President, his government and his party could give people any hope of solving their livelihood problems – which they had thought in the days of the Revolution and in the wake of Mubarak stepping down to be on their way to be resolved, only to discover them to be increasing day by day. And regardless of the talk that points to part of Hassan Al-Banna's testament being to close shops early, all of the justifications put forward by the government to promote the decision to close shops at 10 pm are logical ones, only for a country other than Egypt. Indeed, providing electricity, alleviating traffic congestion and giving families the opportunity to spend time together are all acceptable, nay noble, objectives, albeit in a country that does not suffer from rampant unemployment, a crushing economic crisis, stifling recession, abject poverty, frightening insecurity and a time-honored legacy which Egyptians and their tourist guests have grown accustomed to and which can be summed up by saying that “Cairo is a capital that never sleeps" – suddenly finding those who would impose not only on Cairo and its guests that they sleep early... but on all of Egypt!
