The transitional process had dragged on for almost two years and appeared on the verge of collapse. It removes the unpopular Prosecutor General, a Mubarak-era holdover paves the way for retrial of recently acquitted officials implicated in violence against demonstrators protects both the Shura Council and Constituent Assembly from possible court-ordered dissolution prolongs the Constituent Assembly’s term by two months and, crucially, immunises all presidential decisions from judicial review until adoption of a new constitution. The constitutional declaration orders far-reaching change. The key lies in devising a compromise enabling the transition to move forward at a reasonable pace while offering substantive guarantees to an apprehensive opposition. He used a chainsaw where a scalpel was needed. But the president has offered the wrong answer to a real problem. A highly politicised judiciary has been doing all in its power to hinder the new leadership’s efforts and obstruct the expression of popular will, while the non-Islamist opposition has not shown itself the least bit constructive or conciliatory. Morsi had ample justification for frustration.

It also was evidence of the impasse in which Egypt’s transition has been stuck as well as of the Muslim Brotherhood’s worrying tendency to try to overcome it by ignoring rather than compromising with its detractors. President Mohamed Morsi’s dramatic one-two punch – producing a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas on 22 November issuing a constitutional declaration granting himself full powers the next day – was proof of remarkable political deftness.

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