Egypt's New Rule

Egypt's elected president is felled by mass demonstrations. Can a democracy be run by protest?

Photograph by Yuri Kozyrev-Noor for TIME; Color treated by TIME

Crowds are everything in egyptian politics. The throngs in tahrir square ousted President Hosni Mubarak after three decades in power, and public protests shortened the rule of the geriatric generals who first took his place. That ushered in Egypt's first fair presidential election in, well, 6,000 years of history. But then, after only one year of democratic leadership, the crowds took over again. For many Egyptians, protest equals democracy. The millions afoot on June 30 persuaded Egypt's powerful military to remove President Mohamed Morsi after his first and only year in office. One of the first acts of its "transitional government"...

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