On the face of it, the winds should have been favorable for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
After kings and military dictators, he was Egypt's first democratically elected president. He prevailed at the polls a year ago by a very narrow margin, with almost 52 percent of the vote in a runoff. It had not been the happiest of choices. The young men and women of Tahrir Square who had brought down the old dictatorship had been disinherited; their revolution, they asserted, had been hijacked.
Now, after a tumultuous year, Morsi's critics called for a national strike last Sunday with the aim of driving him from power. After the last pharaoh — the label given Hosni Mubarak — social peace has not come to Egypt.