Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted from power on Wednesday after a successful military coup, begat the misrule currently gripping his country by ignoring the needs of too many of his fellow citizens, says Egyptian writer and activist Ahdaf Soueif.

“[Morsi] was not governing Egypt in the interests of Egypt,” Soueif says. “He was not even seeing the Egyptian people or their demands, and he lost an amazing opportunity to actually have a government that actually worked for the majority of the people.”

Soueif is the author of numerous books, including “The Map of Love” and, most recently, “Cairo: My City, Our Revolution.” She wrote the foreword to “Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as It Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made It.”

Her comments echo the sentiments of Juan Cole, who wrote on this site this week, “Morsi, given the widespread fear of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, had a responsibility to go out of his way to allay those anxieties. Instead, he reinforced them at every turn. Egyptians have been galvanized and politically mobilized by the events of the past 30 months, and refuse to be quiet in the face of what they see as incompetent government and unfair Brotherization.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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