Balagan in Egypt

This just in:

Egypt's constitutional court ruled on Thursday disqualified the country's parliament, just three days before presidential elections. The court ruled that one third of the seats in the Islamist-dominated parliament were invalid.

Following this decision, Egypt's ruling military council announced that if any part of the parliament is illegal, then the entire body should be dissolved.

Mohammed al-Beltagui, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, said the court’s ruling, together with another recent decision giving the military powers of arrests, amounted to "a complete coup through which the military council erases the most honorable period in this nation’s history.”

Beltagui is a senior member of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which dominated the parliament that has been dissolved.

The constitutional court also ruled against a law that would have barred deposed president Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, from participating in Sunday's presidential poll runoff against the Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi.

Here is what I wrote a year ago:

Now that the dictator Mubarak is out of power there is a lot of speculation about what lies ahead for Egypt. Some pundits say we are witnessing the dawn of democracy. Egypt will become a beacon of political enlightenment in an Arab world ruled largely by despots.

Others are almost sure that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over Egypt. The land of the Pharoahs is the way to becoming just a larger version of the Gaza Strip, Hamastan raised to the fifth power.

Still others foresee the army continuing to rule over Egypt if it is not satisfied with the results of the upcoming elections. The army is probably interested in seeing someone from its own ranks taking control of the nation, in the tradition of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak.

Who is right? Perhaps none of the above. I think that the third option is the most likely. Time will tell.

Could it be that the courts in Egypt are helping the army to retain power?