After glorious and inspiring January 25
Revolution, which brought so much hopes and expectations to Egyptians, the
country is facing a really hard transitional period. The reasons of those
difficulties are very different and require deep analysis, but the most obvious
cause could be the lack of unity within the revolutionary forces. Lack of that
unity, which made Egyptians to finally go out from their homes in January 2011
and to make their voices heard after long years of oppression and silence.
When the revolutionaries finally got the
victory in that uprising and Egypt’s long standing President Hosni Mubarak
stepped down, there was the smell of euphoria and happiness in the air, but the
most important thing: There was hope that Egypt will change and the people will
finally get their rights and the possibility of better life. But something
somehow went wrong, and the transitional period became the real test and even threat
to the Revolution and to its goals. The biggest mistake was maybe was to give
all the power at that time to the Military – to SCAF (Supreme Council of the
Armed Forces), which actually represented the same forces as there were under
Mubarak’s rule. Many of the demands of Revolution weren’t delivered, the transition
was artificially prolonged using the hard situation within the country,
security vacuum and emergency law, under which Egypt was during Mubarak’s long
rule. In other words: only the leader of regime was deposed, but not the regime
itself. And on this stage lack of unity within the revolutionary and liberal
forces and their inability or unwillingness to negotiate with SCAF and Muslim
Brotherhood to achieve the goals of Revolution led to the situation, when the people
started to feel that Revolution was simply hijacked and the results of it were
stolen and used by different political forces for their own interests, but not
for the interests of the country. That became more obvious after Parliamentary
elections.
The Constitutional Referendum in March 2011 cancelled the current 1971 Constitution, the Parliament elections brought Islamists to power and left the liberal forces behind, the attempts to create Constitutional Assembly failed cause of interference of Islamist dominated parliament and refusal of liberal forces to work together with Muslim Brotherhood under such circumstances.
Egypt is facing now the growing problems in
a lot of aspects, such as unemployment, education and health systems problems,
poverty. The situation only deteriorates, and the current Parliament led by
Islamist forces became unable to resolve any of those problems, preferring to
discuss such issues as ban of pornography, female genital mutilation, separate
education programs for boys and girls, possible ban of alcohol etc. and to
measure the level of religiosity and piety of each other manipulating the
society’s mind with religion’s issues, instead of working on the really actual and
deep problems which Egypt has now. This led to dissatisfaction with the
policies of Muslim Brotherhood, and the earlier trusted power started to lose
its support among the simple Egyptians, who voted for Islamist parties in
Parliament elections hoping for positive changes which their ruling could
bring. But it didn’t happen, and the Presidential elections, which took place
on 23 and 24 May 2012 and gathered almost 50% of eligible voters in Egypt at
the hundreds of polling stations nationwide and abroad, showed the decline of
Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity. If the Parliamentary elections showed the firm
victory of Islamist forces with the results of near 70%, the Presidential elections
represented the decline of their popularity with almost 50% of votes. And this
is very important sign for Egyptian transition.
Despite the fact that Muslim Brotherhood’s
candidate Mohamed Morsi won the majority of votes, the gap between him and
Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last Prime Minister and ex-chief of Egypt’s Air Forces,
is not that big. A huge amount of votes went surprisingly to the independent
Nasserist candidate Hamdeen Sabbahy and to moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul
Fotouh, who was running independent too, followed by Amr Moussa, former Foreign
Minister of Egypt.
Those developments are very important and
significant for current stage of Egypt’s transition to democracy, because it
signalizes the changes within the political forces and in the society itself.
But nothing goes easy, and Egypt stepped into the stage of historical
Presidential elections very divided and worried. If the main issue during the
January 25 Revolution was the struggle between the revolutionary forces
(uniting liberals and Islamists) seeking the changes and downfall of corrupt
regime on the one side and the Mubarak’s oppressive regime itself on the
opposite side, today the picture is different and very complicated.
The main players are now Islamist powers
vs. secular forces, but those secular forces are divided too and include the so
called “feloul” or the remnants of the previous, Mubarak’s regime, and
independent forces with different political programs and agendas, like the very
popular in Egypt leftist powers, for example. And we cannot underestimate the
great role of SCAF too, and their role in the current events could be considered
as the decisive one. During the whole period of Egypt’s long and still
continuing transition SCAF remained in power and was controlling all the
processes in the country. The current situation with Egypt’s new Constitution,
which isn’t written yet, shows the wish of generals to keep some of their
privileges and powers in the future too, and the country could be still ruled
by the Military from behind the curtain, even if the power will be transferred
to civilian rule. Under those circumstances Egypt stepped into the stage of
Presidential elections without Constitution, when the people are choosing their
new leader, but there is actually no state document declaring the future
President’s powers and duties. There is even no clear vision of how the new
political system in Egypt will be. This all leaves a lot of possibilities for
SCAF to control the political situation in Egypt even after transferring the
powers to civilian rule in the end of June as it was promised.
But despite this, the Presidential
elections are very important for Egypt now, and the people, the citizens of
Egypt should take all the responsibilities while choosing their next leader,
even if his powers aren’t clear yet. The first round of the elections brought a
lot of surprises and unexpected results. First of all, none of the presidential
polls conducted earlier by different organizations were right, and the
candidates claiming to be the frontrunners in those polls took less votes than
it was expected. Amr Moussa, who was considered to be the first, came only the
fifth, and another possible presidential contender in run offs, Abdel Moneim
Abouel Fotouh, who was unbelievably popular, came only the fourth. Hamdeen
Sabbahy took surprisingly the third place and is enjoying now the wide support
of Egyptians, but no one could even imagine such a success for his campaign. But
the main result of the first round of Egypt’s Presidential elections is that
the frontrunners are the representatives of the two completely different and
even opposite forces: the first is Mohamed Morsi, backed by Muslim Brotherhood,
and the second is Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last Prime Minister. Those results
became unexpected for many, and they actually showed once again that Egyptians
became completely unpredictable when it is about political situation in the
country. After the official results of the first round of Presidential
elections were declared by SPEC (Supreme Presidential Elections Council) ,
there were a lot of dissatisfaction and disagreement among the candidates and
between the voters as well.
Egyptians came protesting in the streets demanding
the review of the election’s results, some of the candidates sent the appeals
to SPEC claiming there was fraud and a lot of violations during the process,
and there were the new calls for the so called “disenfranchisement law”
(disqualification of the persons, who had occupied the high ruling positions during 10 years of Mubarak’s rule
before his leaving the office in February 2011), and this law should hit Ahmed
Shafiq and prevent him from taking part in the presidential run offs and allow
Mohamed Morsi to face Hamdeen Sabbahy instead of Shafiq. There were even the
calls to Mohamed Morsi to withdraw from the presidential race in favor of the
revolutionary candidate Sabbahy. But all the appeals were rejected by SPEC,
disqualification of Ahmed Shafiq at this stage is nearly impossible, and there
are no doubts that Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi won’t withdraw. So,
despite the huge protests, the run offs will be between Ahmed Shafiq and
Mohamed Morsi, and this situation could be really very difficult for a lot of
Egyptian revolutionaries.
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| Mohamed Morsi |
Mohamed Morsi represents the Islamist
forces, and his political project named “The Renaissance” has the Islamic background,
and this is the main fear for the most people seeing Egypt as a secular state
and for Egyptian Christians as well. That’s why Ahmed Shafiq’s winning card is
the view of Egypt as a secular state and the opposing of Islamist forces, which
already took the main powers in the parliament and are trying to have the
bigger impact on writing the new Constitution of Egypt. So the Presidential
elections turned to the struggle between the Islamist and secular forces, but
for many Egyptians Ahmed Shafiq is the extension of Mubarak’s regime, of the
regime with which the people were fighting during the revolution. And now this
regime has all the chances to come back to power, and the results of January 25
Revolution seem to be completely lost, and it looks for many like Egypt made a
few steps back again. But from another hand, the victory of Morsi will lead to
Islamist domination on all the levels of power and to the possible turning
Egypt into the religious state, and that wasn’t for sure the goal of revolution
too. So this all causes frustration, and many Egyptians are undecided now to
whom they have to give their votes during the run offs in June, and some of
them are very serious about boycotting those elections, because no one of the
candidates represents them. And this choice might be really hard one.
The presidential contenders in turn are trying
now to attract the more support is possible now, trying to negotiate with
another political forces and presidential candidates and delivering to the
people the new promises about the future of Egypt under their possible rule.
Ahmed Shafiq is talking about restoring the
security and improvement of economical and social situation in the country,
creating the new jobs, reforming education etc., and all of those directions
are really very important now for Egypt. But the most important message he is
trying to deliver to his voters is the secular nature of Egypt and the equal
rights for all the groups of Egyptian citizens. So this can attract a lot of
secular forces and voters seeking secular, non-religious Egypt. On the other
hand, in spite of being associated with Mubarak’s regime Ahmed Shafiq is very
unlikely ready to impose this regime again and to come back to its tactics,
cause he might understand it very well: either he will try to restore Egypt and
to bring stability to the country or he could face another Tahrir Square,
because Egyptians are very unlikely to be silent again. So all of that makes
the fears of coming back to Mubarak’s times less in case of Ahmed Shafiq’s win
the Presidential race.
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| Ahmed Shafiq |
Mohamed Morsi, in his turn, is trying to
attract the voters by delivering the message of Egypt as a moderate state with
Islamic background. His pledges are connected to the promise to protect the
rights of pro-democracy protesters, who mostly see the Muslim Brotherhood as
the betrayers of the revolution. He promises also the full rights for
Christians and women in the country and plans to appoint Christians as
presidential advisers and maybe even as a Vice-President. The women’s rights
must be protected, and the women will have the ability to choose their job in
any sphere they wish and to take an active part in a social life of the
country. Also Morsi claims there will be no attempts to impose the Islamic
dress-code on the women, and the question of hijab will remain the personal
matter. Islamist candidate praises also the military generals who took over
after Mubarak, he acknowledges their mistakes made during the transitional
period but praises the positive steps, such as the elections were held under
the security of army and police and went smooth. Morsi is ready to create a
broad coalition government from different political forces and promises that
the Egypt’s new Constitution would be written by a panel representative of the
whole nation. And all those messages could attract a lot of voters too, because
they represent the moderate Islamist program.
The main question now is where the votes
given to Hamdeen Sabbahy, Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, Amr Moussa and other
candidates of the first round of elections will go to during the run offs in
June. One can try to predict, that the most of Morsi’s supporters from the
first stage of elections could stay with him at the second one too, and the
voices for another Islamist candidates could go for him either. Most of
Christians could give their votes to Ahmed Shafiq cause of the fears of Islamic
state, and the supporters of secular forces will possibly cast their ballots
for Shafiq too, as the opposition to the religious state in Egypt. The most
important is how the voices for Hamdeen Sabbahy could be distributed in the run
offs. And of course there is another possible scenario: Some people will
probably boycott the elections, as they don’t see the choice they could make.
But making the prognoses and trying to predict the results of the elections in
Egypt is very difficult, and the previous results showed already that Egyptians
are unpredictable, so the best option is to wait for the elections.
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| Hamdeen Sabbahy |
But whatever the candidate will win the
presidential race, he will face a lot of difficulties in his ruling, because
Egypt is facing now growing problems in economic, social sectors, health and
educational systems, there is a security vacuum in the country, the situation
with unemployment doesn’t change and is only getting worse, the numbers of
people living below the poverty line are still huge. And all of those tasks
must be resolved by the next president, or he could face another wave of
protests. The situation is complicated with the absence of the Constitution and
determined duties and powers of the future president. But in any case there is
a hope that those elections will finally bring some positive changes to
Egyptians, and the country will head to the better future and development of
all the fields of life. The most important thing for the Egyptians now is to
consolidate on this hard stage and to unite for the achieving of the common
goals – better future, higher standards of life and the delivering of the
Revolution’s demands.
For those purposes Egyptians have to think carefully before voting in
the elections, and if there were two possible ways of choosing the candidate in
the first round – either listening to their heart, or voting strategically, – on this
second stage there should be the only one option: to think carefully and to
analyze and to vote only strategically. And the most important thing: They all
have to be responsible for the decisions we make and to always remember about
it, especially in such important times like in today’s Egypt.
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