A woman casts her vote at a primary school in El-Manyal, November 28, 2011. Photo: Jonathan Rashad
If Egyptians have been dizzied and dismayed by the merry-go-round of the presidential race, there is some solace in that at least this time, for the first time ever in an Arab Presidential election, no one knows what the result will be when voting begins on 23rd May. As much as it is fun and funny to watch this new sport of Egyptian politics (a year old and toddling now) farce is in danger of tipping into tragicomedy. As one Egyptian friend of mine, a wise commentator, beloved of journalists in need of a sagacious quote, admitted some time ago, “I have given up analysis! There’s nothing to do but watch.”
Having stated for a year that it would never field a presidential candidate, the Muslim Brotherhood changed its mind at the last minute. Then Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s chief of intelligence, with an ascetic bald head and thin drawn cheeks who seems to have never been photographed smiling, threw his hat into the ring. And then the news hit the fan that Hazem Abu Ismail’s mother had taken American citizenship before she died. Abu Ismail, a fundamentalist Salafi with a big white beard and a populist platform of religion and revolution had plastered the capital with grinning campaign posters. Hahaha! laughed the Liberals gleefully watching him caught in the headlights of political revelation. An American mother disqualifies him.
Rumours and conspiracy theories were rife. The Salafis believed that the Americans had discredited Abu Ismail because they feared his anti-western agenda. A giant rally of beards convened on Tahrir Square. The Brotherhood thought that Suleiman’s candidacy signalled a plot by the ruling military council to ballot stuff a military strongman back into the presidency. They held a giant rally in Tahrir too. The Liberals worried that the Brotherhood’s disingenuity had propelled them into a position where they could potentially control parliament (they are the largest party, with 47 per cent of seats). The Liberal rally in Tahrir was small and broken up by the Salafis who smashed up their stage and unplugged their loud speakers.
Then headlines lurched again. I was with a friend in a café reading Twitter because news in Egypt this past year is too fast for regular news sites. My friend threw his hands in the air. “I can’t take this; everything is changing by the hour!” The electoral commission said that it was disqualifying ten candidates. The Brotherhood’s first choice, Khairat al-Shater, was out because he had been convicted under Mubarak of being a member of a banned organisation that was no longer banned. Hazem Abu Ismail’s mother was indeed American and the Interior Ministry had documents to prove it. Omar Suleiman had apparently failed to register the number of signatures required for candidacy.
Spin the wheel and theorise more: Suleiman was never the military council’s candidate; he and Field Marshal Tantawi, head of the council and now de facto executive ruler of Egypt, had long been at loggerheads. The military council was desperate to prevent a Brotherhood presidency; if Suleiman had to be scuttled to make it look like a fair fight, then fine. Suleiman was a stalking horse all the time—with all the heavy guns out of the race, Amr Moussa, once Mubarak’s foreign minister, more recently an ineffectual secretary general of the Arab League, could prove bland enough to be palatable to most sides, even as he has little direct appeal for any. But yet more questions abounded. Who was going to get the Salafi vote now? How would the Brotherhood’s back-up candidate Mohamed Morsy, an unknown backroom personality, fare against the moderate Islamist Aboul Fotouh, a doctor with a kindly grandfatherly air, whom the Brotherhood had expelled from their ranks because, ironically, he had gone against their policy of not running a candidate, by entering the presidential race ?
The race no longer seemed to be a contest between the two main powerhouses of Egyptian political life, the military establishment and the Brotherhood. What was the choice now? A secular old former regimist, a moderate Islamist and a bit less moderate Islamist. Will voters be choosing between a civil state and a religious one, or between a return to the status quo and a chance to push through the aspirations of the revolution? My friend in the café is a member of the Social Democratic Party. The only Liberal candidate running is a human rights lawyer with no chance. “I honestly don’t know who to vote for,” he told me. I said I worried that all the disqualifications would simply mean a loss of faith in the process, that Egyptians would suspect that the regulations had been manipulated by the powers that be. If no candidate receives an overall majority in the first ballot, there will be a run off between the top two. That most likely means a contest between an Islamist and Moussa. We looked at each other across the table. So who’s going to win? “Moussa,” we said in unison. Quiet, won’t rock the boat, life goes on as normal, security officials still in their offices, the military keeps its state-within-a-state status. Nothing much changes. And this was the most dispiriting theory of all. We fell silent and ordered another beer.
If Egyptians have been dizzied and dismayed by the merry-go-round of the presidential race, there is some solace in that at least this time, for the first time ever in an Arab Presidential election, no one knows what the result will be when voting begins on 23rd May. As much as it is fun and funny to watch this new sport of Egyptian politics (a year old and toddling now) farce is in danger of tipping into tragicomedy. As one Egyptian friend of mine, a wise commentator, beloved of journalists in need of a sagacious quote, admitted some time ago, “I have given up analysis! There’s nothing to do but watch.”
Having stated for a year that it would never field a presidential candidate, the Muslim Brotherhood changed its mind at the last minute. Then Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s chief of intelligence, with an ascetic bald head and thin drawn cheeks who seems to have never been photographed smiling, threw his hat into the ring. And then the news hit the fan that Hazem Abu Ismail’s mother had taken American citizenship before she died. Abu Ismail, a fundamentalist Salafi with a big white beard and a populist platform of religion and revolution had plastered the capital with grinning campaign posters. Hahaha! laughed the Liberals gleefully watching him caught in the headlights of political revelation. An American mother disqualifies him.
Rumours and conspiracy theories were rife. The Salafis believed that the Americans had discredited Abu Ismail because they feared his anti-western agenda. A giant rally of beards convened on Tahrir Square. The Brotherhood thought that Suleiman’s candidacy signalled a plot by the ruling military council to ballot stuff a military strongman back into the presidency. They held a giant rally in Tahrir too. The Liberals worried that the Brotherhood’s disingenuity had propelled them into a position where they could potentially control parliament (they are the largest party, with 47 per cent of seats). The Liberal rally in Tahrir was small and broken up by the Salafis who smashed up their stage and unplugged their loud speakers.
Then headlines lurched again. I was with a friend in a café reading Twitter because news in Egypt this past year is too fast for regular news sites. My friend threw his hands in the air. “I can’t take this; everything is changing by the hour!” The electoral commission said that it was disqualifying ten candidates. The Brotherhood’s first choice, Khairat al-Shater, was out because he had been convicted under Mubarak of being a member of a banned organisation that was no longer banned. Hazem Abu Ismail’s mother was indeed American and the Interior Ministry had documents to prove it. Omar Suleiman had apparently failed to register the number of signatures required for candidacy.
Spin the wheel and theorise more: Suleiman was never the military council’s candidate; he and Field Marshal Tantawi, head of the council and now de facto executive ruler of Egypt, had long been at loggerheads. The military council was desperate to prevent a Brotherhood presidency; if Suleiman had to be scuttled to make it look like a fair fight, then fine. Suleiman was a stalking horse all the time—with all the heavy guns out of the race, Amr Moussa, once Mubarak’s foreign minister, more recently an ineffectual secretary general of the Arab League, could prove bland enough to be palatable to most sides, even as he has little direct appeal for any. But yet more questions abounded. Who was going to get the Salafi vote now? How would the Brotherhood’s back-up candidate Mohamed Morsy, an unknown backroom personality, fare against the moderate Islamist Aboul Fotouh, a doctor with a kindly grandfatherly air, whom the Brotherhood had expelled from their ranks because, ironically, he had gone against their policy of not running a candidate, by entering the presidential race ?
The race no longer seemed to be a contest between the two main powerhouses of Egyptian political life, the military establishment and the Brotherhood. What was the choice now? A secular old former regimist, a moderate Islamist and a bit less moderate Islamist. Will voters be choosing between a civil state and a religious one, or between a return to the status quo and a chance to push through the aspirations of the revolution? My friend in the café is a member of the Social Democratic Party. The only Liberal candidate running is a human rights lawyer with no chance. “I honestly don’t know who to vote for,” he told me. I said I worried that all the disqualifications would simply mean a loss of faith in the process, that Egyptians would suspect that the regulations had been manipulated by the powers that be. If no candidate receives an overall majority in the first ballot, there will be a run off between the top two. That most likely means a contest between an Islamist and Moussa. We looked at each other across the table. So who’s going to win? “Moussa,” we said in unison. Quiet, won’t rock the boat, life goes on as normal, security officials still in their offices, the military keeps its state-within-a-state status. Nothing much changes. And this was the most dispiriting theory of all. We fell silent and ordered another beer.
