Monthly Archives: June 2012

France

Final thoughts on French parliamentary runoff results

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As noted in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s parliament elections, the French left looked likely to take a narrow absolute majority of seats in the Assemblée nationale.

As it turns out, the Parti socialiste of François Hollande did even better — it and its allies took 314 seats, not including the 17 seats that its electoral partner, France’s Green Party (Europe Écologie – Les Verts) won: significantly higher than the projection of between 270 and 300 and nearly equivalent to the parliamentary wave after Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election.  In this sense, Hollande’s party actually outperformed Hollande in the presidential race.

But the left’s victory was expected — the pattern of French voters handing a solid presidential majority in June parliamentary elections (following the May presidential runoff) therefore continues.

It will mark the first time that the French left have won control of the government since the 1997 legislative elections; the left lost power in 2002, following Jospin’s surprise third-place finish in the presidential election of that year.

With the final results now counted, here’s a look at each party and its road ahead:

Continue reading Final thoughts on French parliamentary runoff results →

Greece

Samaras pieces together coalition after ND places first in Greek election

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The rest of the eurozone — indeed, the rest of the world — may have breathed a sigh of relief Sunday when it turned out that the pro-bailout parties appeared likely to secure a majority of the seats in the second of two highly divisive parliamentary elections in Greece.

As shown above, New Democracy (Νέα Δημοκρατία) has won the largest share of votes, taking with it the 50-seat “bonus” in the Hellenic parliament.  It is now very likely to form a coalition with the pro-bailout PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement – Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα), and possibly even with the Democratic Left (Δημοκρατική Αριστερά), according to reports of the latest coalition talks.  New Democracy’s leader Antonis will likely be Greece’s new prime minister, with the only question being whether PASOK and Democratic Left figures will take positions in the government or merely provide support to the coalition.

Samaras is allegedly favoring the appointment of Vassilis Rapanos, the president of National Bank, as finance minister.

Athens News has a full blog of Tuesday’s coalition talk developments.

In the meanwhile, here’s a look at where each of the main political actors stand in the fallout of Sunday’s vote, looking onward to what should still be a hot, wearisome summer for Greece and its position in the eurozone: Continue reading Samaras pieces together coalition after ND places first in Greek election →

Egypt

Vote count begins in Egypt in Morsi-Shafiq runoff

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Meanwhile, as if the Greek and French election results weren’t enough, counting has begin in the Egyptian presidential runoff between Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq. 

Morsi is the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood and Shafiq is a former prime minister under Hosni Mubarak.  The election has been thrown into disarray following a decision by Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court to disband the parliament on legal technicalities — the Brotherhood-affiliated party held 235 out of 5o8 seats in the parliament that had been elected only in January 2012.

France

French election results show Hollande’s Socialists with narrow majority; Marine Le Pen, Bayrou and Royal lose contests

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It appears that the Parti socialiste of newly elected French president François Hollande has won an absolute majority in today’s parliamentary elections — they will control 290 seats, a slim majority, in the Assemblée nationale.  This will give Hollande, and his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, a clear path to implement their pro-growth program of higher taxes and fewer budget cuts for France, following in the longtime French trend of voters handing a parliamentary majority in June to the party whose president they have elected in May (as happened in 1995 and 2002 for Jacques Chirac and in 2007 for Nicolas Sarkozy). 

Front national leader Marine Le Pen appears to have lost her race in Pas-de-Calais 11 by the slimmest of margins to the Parti socialiste candidate, Phillippe Kemel. Meanwhile Marion Maréchal Le Pen — the granddaughter of former Front national leader Jean-Marie Le Pen — appears to have won her seat in Vaucluse 3, giving the Front national its first parliamentary seat since 1998.

Centrist Mouvement démocrate leader and former presidential candidate François Bayrou has lost his race in the seat he had held in Pyrénées-Atlantiques 2 — often with the full support of the center-right — since 1986.  His MoDem colleague, Jean Lasalle, however, appears to have held on to his own seat in Pyrénées-Atlantiques 4.

And in the most keenly watched race of the day, Olivier Falorni has won a crushing 62% to 37% victory over Ségolène Royal, the former partner of the president, the mother of his children and the Parti socialiste‘s 2007 presidential candidate.  Falorni is a local renegade Socialist, and a tweet of support from Hollande’s current partner Valérie Trierweiler in support of Falorni (in opposition to the entire high guard of the Parti socialiste) erupted into a firestorm earlier this week that threatened to overshadow the second round altogether.  Hollande will have to find a new role for Royal, who had been touted as the next president of the Assemblée nationale.

Former foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, who resigned for in artful comments and other missteps during the anti-Ben Ali revolution in Tunisia in early 2011, has been narrowly defeated by Parti socialiste candidate Sylviane Alaux in Pyrénées-Atlantiques 6.  In Nord 21, Jean-Louis Borloo, the leader of the Radical Party and a center-right ally, will hold on.

Full results and commentary will follow later.

Greece

Initial Greek election results point to win for New Democracy

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With just over 50% of results in, it appears that New Democracy will win today’s election in Greece.

If the results (set forth below) remain consistent as votes are counted, it will mark a result fairly consistent with the result in the May election, with more voters, however, shifting to the two main contestants — New Democracy and SYRIZA definitely have shaved off votes from the other parties.

PASOK will have done a little worse, having been crushed by the pro-bailout New Democracy from its right and by SYRIZA’s stridently anti-bailout position to its left, but will likely join a coalition with New Democracy.

I wonder if New Democracy’s alliance in the second round with the Democratic Alliance will have made a crucial difference — a small centrist/liberal party founded by a former member of New Democracy (Dora Bakoyannis), who was expelled from New Democracy in 2010.  The party won just around 2.5% in the first round of the election, and the formal alliance this time around may well mark the difference between New Democracy and SYRIZA.

It will be a disappointment for the mainstream parties that Golden Dawn appears to have done no worse or no better from the first round — the mainstream parties will now have to find a way to live with a blatantly neo-fascist party in the Hellenic parliament and to confront the reasons why 7% of the Greek electorate emphatically support a party that has espoused neo-nazi views.

Outside of Greece, New Democracy’s win will likely be taken by the European Union and the international community as a good sign — a sign that Greece is fully committed to remaining in the eurozone and to the austerity program that is a condition of the country’s two bailouts.  But it remains nearly certain that Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy and likely Greece’s next prime minister, will engage in negotiations with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund to ease the austerity in Greece or to achieve some sort of aid package to help get Greece’s economy growing again.

While New Democracy’s election won’t necessarily prevent Greece’s exit from the eurozone, it does not seem likely that Monday will mark a “Lehman” moment, where doubts about Greece could spur a bank run throughout the troubled economies of the European Union, as could have been the case in the event of a SYRIZA win.

And for SYRIZA itself? We have not seen the last of its brash, young leader in Alexis Tsipras, who will now be the main opposition figure.  In doing so well in the May election, Tsipras forced the two main parties, but especially New Democracy, into acknowledging the real pain that austerity has inflicted throughout Greek civil society and moving toward SYRIZA’s position that the terms of the bailout must be renegotiated.  In opposition, Tsipras will have no responsibility for the difficult decisions that Greece’s new government will inevitably have to take, and he will have an opportunity to enshrine SYRIZA more permanently as the mainstream leftist party in Greece — perhaps with a merger of the Democratic Left (a slightly more moderate party that itself split in 2010 from SYRIZA), and by continuing to poach away voter support from PASOK and from the KKE (the Communists).

The first key will be to see what post Evangelos Venizelos, PASOK’s leader, receives in an New Democracy-PASOK government — it seems very likely that the one-time finance minister, much respected in that role throughout the past year, will now once again be finance minister.  If so, however, he will struggle in his role as PASOK’s leader to define PASOK’s ongoing role in Greek politics, especially with SYRIZA resurgent on its left.  As the minor partner in a conservative, pro-austerity government, Greece’s longtime socialist party seems to have a precarious future.

* * * *

New Democracy (center-right party): 30.24% with a projected 130 seats.

SYRIZA (radical left anti-bailout party):  26.30%with 70 seats.

PASOK (traditional party of Greece’s left, but “pro-bailout” party): 12.69% with 34 seats.

Independent Greeks (anti-bailout right-wing party): 7.45% with 20 seats.

Golden Dawn (neo-fascist party): 6.94% with 18 seats.

Democratic Left (another leftist anti-bailout party): 6.07% with 16 seats.

KKE (Greece’s communist party): 4.43% with 12 seats.

 

Egypt, France, Greece

Big weekend for France, Greece and Egypt

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It’s another big weekend for elections!

Voters in Egypt go to the polls today and tomorrow to choose a president in the final runoff between the Muslim brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, a former Air Force commander and the final prime minister of former president Hosni Mubarak, in what is seen as a Hobson’s choice between Islamism and the military. Since the Supreme Constitutional Court disbanded the parliament, and Egypt hasn’t even written a new constitution, though, we have no idea whether the new president has real power or will be a figurehead!

Read Suffragio’s coverage of the Egyptian election here.

Voters in France go to the polls for the second time in two weeks for the second round of parliamentary elections, which are expected to confirm a governing majority for newly elected Parti socialiste president François Hollande.  One open question is whether Hollande’s party (and their allies) will win the 289 seats necessary to govern without forming a coalition with the greens and/or communists.  Controversial individual contests also see Hollande’s former partner Ségolène Royal, far-right Front national leader Marine Le Pen and centrist François Bayrou fighting hard for seats in France’s national assembly.

Read Suffragio’s coverage of the French elections here.

Finally, voters return to the polls in Greece after no party emerged in May elections with enough support to form a governing coalition.  Far-left SYRIZA, led by the brash, youthful Alexis Tsipras, is expected to vie with center-right New Democracy for the lead in what will still likely be a fragmented result.  Most of the Hellenic parliament’s seats are awarded on the basis of proportional representation for all parties that receive over 3% of the vote, while the top party receives a ‘bonus’ of 50 seats.  The leading party seems likely to form a governing coalition.

Read Suffragio’s coverage of the Greek elections here.

France

Fifteen key seats to watch in Sunday’s final French parliamentary runoffs

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Sunday will mark the fourth and final round of voting in two months as France finishes its legislative elections.

The key number to watch as returns come in is 289 — that’s the number of seats that President François Hollande’s Parti socialiste (and its allies) will need in order to hold an absolute majority in the Assemblée nationale.  In the first round last Sunday, the Parti socialiste won 29% to just 27% for the center-right’s Union pour un mouvement populaire — the broad left expected to line up behind Hollande, however, received almost 47% of the vote.  As such, it is expected that the French left will command a majority of the seats after Sunday’s runoff — the question is whether the Socialists will need to govern in coalition with France’s Green Party (Europe Écologie – Les Verts), with which the Parti socialiste has an electoral pact or, more broadly, with the far-left Front de gauche.

But there are many individual races worth watching as well.  So without further ado, here are 15 races to keep an eye on: Continue reading Fifteen key seats to watch in Sunday’s final French parliamentary runoffs →

Egypt

Morsi responds to Egypt parliament’s dissolution

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In light of what former Muslim Brotherhood leader and former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh called a coup earlier today, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohammed Morsi has responded to today’s events with, let’s say, somewhat different postures, just a little over 24 hours before Egyptians head to the polls for the presidential runoff.

He is now at a press conference wrapping himself in the mantle of the revolution — apparently claiming the felool are trying to undermine the popular will, comparing them to a bone disease that Egyptian voters will wipe out in this weekend’s runoff.  He stopped short of calling the Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision to dissolve Egypt’s parliament a coup.

Earlier today, however, Morsi responded in a way that suggests less urgency than you might expect.

Egyptian presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi gave an interview on Dream 2 on Thursday evening.

“I don’t consider this a military coup,” he said, responding to a question about the Constitutional Court’s decision to dismiss the entire parliament. “I love the military forces,” he said.

That’s not exactly going to endear Morsi to the Egyptians who, already very reluctantly, see him as the only thing standing between a full counter-revolution that would enshrine his opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, a former Air Force commander and Mubarak’s last prime minister, as president, with no constitution and no parliament, with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces now asserting its control over parliamentary powers and re-introducing elements of emergency law.

Morsi and the Brotherhood confirmed that Morsi will not withdraw from the race, which threatens to be overshadowed by Thursday’s ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court that invalidated the election of one-third of the parliamentary seats and seemed poised to launch yet another set of elections for Egypt’s parliament.  Protesters have already arrived at Tahrir Square.

Meanwhile, Mohammed ElBaradei, a respected secular elder statesman and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who withdrew from the presidential election in protest late last year and who has called for boycotting the race, said that the SCAF should postpone this weekend’s presidential runoff.

One potential reason for Morsi’s relative calm? Al Ahram suggested yesterday that the SCAF and the Brotherhood have been privately discussing post-election scenarios, and also suggests that the recent breakthrough on the Constituent Assembly (the group that will write Egypt’s constitution) can be chalked up to these negotiations: Continue reading Morsi responds to Egypt parliament’s dissolution →

Egypt

The SCAF strikes back a day before Egypt’s presidential runoff

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UPDATE: Marc Lynch has a must-read on why this is (probably) the end of the ‘transition’:

But today’s moves by the Constitutional Court on behalf of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) seem difficult to overcome and likely to push Egypt onto a dangerous new path. With Egypt looking ahead to no parliament, no constitution, and a deeply divisive new president, it’s fair to say the experiment in military-led transition has come to its disappointing end.

* * * *

It’s a little hard to know what to make of today’s decision by Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court not to disqualify Ahmed Shafiq from the presidential race (not surprising), but also to invalidate one-third of the seats in the People’s Assembly, thereby dissolving the entire lower house of parliament (surprising).

I think it’s safe to say Tahrir Square is going to be packed tomorrow and throughout the weekend with protestors bitterly opposed to this latest development by a court that’s primarily composed of judges appointed in the Mubarak era.

Make no mistake, the Supreme Constitutional Court represents the Egyptian ‘deep state’ to which so many refer in hushed terms — there simply remain in Egypt’s government many, many remaining sources of power connected to the Mubarak regime.

It certain appears to be a move by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to assert its power, in the face of the Muslim Brotherhood controlling 235 of 508 seats in the now-dissolved parliament and perhaps likely to win this weekend’s presidential election as well under Mohammed Morsi’s candidacy.

In declaring Shafiq eligible for the presidency, the Supreme Constitutional Court declared that the Political Isolation Law — which bars former Mubarak officials from running for office for ten years — is unconstitutional.

SCAF will be taking over parliamentary duties with immediate effect, although prior acts of the parliament will not be anulled.

It’s hard to know, though, whether this is the beginning of a more run-of-the-mill military coup.  It still seems like the SCAF is trying to play the same role in Egypt that the Turkish military played for so many years — a counterweight to rising Islamism and a “guardian” of the secular state.  Yesterday, the justice ministry issued a decree allowing military and intelligence to arrest citizens suspected of crimes, restoring in part some of its powers under Egypt’s emergency law.

So the outcome is not looking too good right now for Egypt’s revolution.

It’s worth, however, stepping back for a moment to consider where Egypt stands:

  • It seems likely that Egypt will hold the third set of parliamentary elections since last winter.  The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Al-Nour Party are currently, by far, the largest and second-largest blocs in a parliament that’s done fairly little since it was elected, except for squabbling. In the January elections,  the Brotherhood won 235 seats under the banner of the newly formed Freedom and Justice Party, the Salafists won 121 seats, and the secular New Wafd Party and the secular liberal Egpytian Block won 38 and 35 seats, respectively.
  • If Shafiq wins the presidency this weekend, his detractors (of which there are many) will suspect that SCAF-engineered fraud had much to do with it.  If Morsi wins the presidency this weekend, it will be seen not as a mandate for the Muslim Brotherhood, but now more than ever a vote against the SCAF and the Mubarak regime.
  • Regardless of whether Shafiq or Morsi wins this weekend, no one knows whether the presidency will truly be powerful or not, because Egypt still has no constitution.
  • Furthermore, no one knows whether the deal struck just last weekend for the Constituent Assembly — the body that will draft the constitution — to be comprised 50-50 of Islamists and non-Islamists even still stands after today, since although it had previously been agreed by Egypt’s parliament, it hadn’t been signed by SCAF.

Maybe Mohamed ElBaradei was right to boycott the whole affair.

Canada

Rae won’t seek Liberal leadership in Canada

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Bob Rae, the interim leader of the beleaguered Liberal Party in Canada and one-time premier of Ontario, will not seek the Liberal Party’s leadership.

It is an unexpected announcement — Rae had received better marks for his performance as interim leader than his predecessors Michael Ignatieff (who defeated Rae in 2009 for the leadership) and Stéphane Dion (who defeated Rae in 2006), and was seen to be the frontrunner in the race.

Attention has already shifted to Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and the party’s most popular potential leader.

The 40-year-old Trudeau has represented Papineau, a Montreal district, since 2008.  Trudeau had previously ruled out a run at the leadership, but pressure is already mounting on Trudeau as the last hope for the once-great party of Canada’s center-left — and he is already ‘listening’ to that pressure in the wake of Rae’s decision.

Even as the party gears up for the leadership contest expected in early 2013, polls show the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party currently tied for the lead in national polls, with the Liberals still trailing far behind — ThreeHundredEight‘s May 2012 federal poll average showed the NDP with 35%, the Tories with 34% and the Liberals with just 19%.

Rae’s strong performance since 2011 as interim leader had made him a frontrunner alongside Trudeau for the permanent leadership.  Indeed, he’s seen as a stronger adversary for Harper than even the official opposition leader — Quebec MP Thomas Mulcair, who was elected as the NDP’s new leader only in March 2012.

But a full-fledged Rae leadership candidacy would have been problematic on several levels:

  • In stepping down as interim leader to run in his own right, Rae would have destabilized the Liberals in Parliament at a time when the party can least afford it, with Mulcair now consolidating his position as opposition leader.
  • His interim leadership has not done anything to help the Liberals’ poll numbers, which remain as low as the party’s depressed support in the 2011 general election.
  • It is unclear that Rae, a twice-failed leadership candidate in his mid-60s, would be able to lead the party through the two or three election cycles that it is likely to take for the party to move up from 34 seats to Official Opposition and then back into government.
  • A leadership campaign would have undoubtedly dredged up his controversial record as the NDP premier of Ontario in the 1990s (he failed to win reelection in 1995), and it would also have subjected him to suspicions that he’s keen on engineering a merger with the NDP (which, for what it’s worth, might not be the worst idea for the Liberal Party).

All things considered, his decision seems sound, and it allows Rae to play the elder statesman in the near future as a new generation of Liberals emerge — a generation that seems to begin and end with Trudeau, but includes nearly a dozen of potential leaders: Continue reading Rae won’t seek Liberal leadership in Canada →

Greece

Post-‘Spailout’ climate pulls Samaras even closer to SYRIZA’s position

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As the second Greek legislative campaign in as many months winds down for Sunday’s vote, it is becoming difficult to spot the difference between the leaders of the two parties most likely to win.

Oh what a difference a month can make.

Antonis Samaras, leader of the center-right New Democracy (Νέα Δημοκρατία), has been moving toward a “renegotiation” position for some time, but his latest comments about a potential renegotiation of Greece’s bailout terms today vary astonishingly little from what Alexis Tsipras, leader of the leftist SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left (Συνασπισμός Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς), has been arguing all along:

Overhauling Greece’s debt deal, known as the memorandum, was also at the top of his party’s agenda, he said. “We will change the memorandum, the relentless recession cannot go on.”

He indicated that European leaders were open to renegotiating Greece’s debt deal. “Europe is changing, Greece has a chance for a fair negotiation within this climate of change,” he said.

Samaras said ND had set two conditions for joining other parties in a coalition government: securing Greece’s position in the eurozone and modifying the memorandum.

It’s a staggering evolution by Samaras, even since May.  Regardless of whether SYRIZA wins on June 17, it has cleared moved the terms of Greece’s national debate.

Meanwhile, read Tsipras’s op-ed in The Financial Times from yesterday — he sounds much more like Samaras than the marching-in-the-streets radical of the first election campaign (indeed, the idea of Tsipras writing an op-ed in The Financial Times back in April would itself have been risible).  It’s clear that, with even-or-so odds of becoming Greece’s next prime minister, Tsipras is looking to project an image of sober competence:

The systemic fiscal problems of Greece are, in large part, a problem of low public revenues.  Myriad tax concessions and exemptions granted to special interests by previous administrations, along with a low effective tax rate on personal income as well as capital, explain much of the problem. So too does the highly ineffective method of tax collection. Continue reading Post-‘Spailout’ climate pulls Samaras even closer to SYRIZA’s position →

France

Tweet sets off ‘battle Royal’ between first lady and Hollande’s former partner

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At first, everyone thought her Twitter account must have been hacked.

But no: here was the new first lady of France, Valérie Trierweiler, the companion of President François Hollande, tweeting her apparent opposition to Hollande’s previous partner and mother of Hollande’s four children, Ségolène Royal, who was also the Parti socialiste‘s 2007 presidential candidate.  Royal is fighting for her political life in a tough second-round runoff where she faces an unexpectedly tough fight from renegade leftist Olivier Falorni.

While the entire Parti socialiste high guard from Hollande himself to party president Martine Aubry to prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault have all called for Falorni to step down in favor of Royal, Trierweiler tweeted this yesterday:

Courage à Olivier Falorni qui n’a pas démérité, qui se bat aux côtés des rochelais depuis tant d’ années dans un engagement désintéressé. [Good luck to Olivier Falorni who is a worthy candidate. For years he has been fighting with selfless commitment for the people of La Rochelle.]

Needless to say, when there’s just a week between the two rounds of a parliamentary election, this has been an unwelcome headline for Hollande, crowding out other political news both yesterday and today.

In the first round in Charente-Maritime 17, Royal won just 32.03% to Falorni’s 28.91% — Sally Chadjaa, the UMP candidate, won just 19.47%, but did not qualify for this Sunday’s runoff.  The result caught the national media off guard and was one of the biggest surprises in Sunday’s mostly unsurprising first round.  Royal, who was running in the constituency for the first time, had been promised the presidency of the Assemblée nationale by Hollande, after graciously campaigning for Hollande at a large rally in Rennes earlier in the spring (shown together above).

Although a poll today, conducted before and during The Tweet, showed that Falorni leads Royal 58% to 42%, mostly on the strength of UMP votes, Ayrault has again called on Falorni to step aside.  It is customary, when two or more leftist candidates advance to the second round, for the second-place candidate to step aside for the first-round winner.  Falorni, who has been a longtime ally to Hollande and who actually lives in the constituency, has refused.

The tweet highlights at least four immediate problems for Hollande and the Parti socialiste, who hope to emerge from Sunday’s elections with an outright majority of at least 289 seats in the Assemblée nationale: Continue reading Tweet sets off ‘battle Royal’ between first lady and Hollande’s former partner →

Egypt

Sabahi, moderates, revolutionaries, secularists — all left behind in Egyptian presidential runoff

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In the aftermath of the first round of Egypt’s presidential election, there seemed to be two possibilities in the face of this weekend’s runoff between the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi, and former Mubarak prime minister Ahmed Shafiq: 

The first scenario would have seen Morsi announce a very broad-based campaign, downplaying the Islamism of his candidacy and emphasizing the moderation of the Muslim Brotherhood (especially vis-a-vis the Salafist Al-Nour party), drawing in secular figures and promising a pro-revolutionary administration that would focus on economic issues, making sufficient concessions to win support from the runners-up of the contest, such as neo-Nasserite Hamdeen Sabahi, the all-things-to-all-people moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, as well as other key figures, such as Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The second scenario would be one in which the main liberal, secular and pro-revolution political figures refuse to endorse either Morsi or Shafiq (given that Shafiq is seen as “felool,” the remnants of the Mubarak regime and the standard-bearer for the reactionary elements of Egypt’s so-called “deep state,” including the governing Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, it was never likely that any of Egypt’s moderates would rally around him), thereby de-legitimizing, in part, whomever wins the election on June 16 and 17.

As it turns out, it’s the second scenario that’s come to pass: ElBaradei returned to Cairo this week — he had been in Vienna for the first round — calling for the elections to be cancelled and the constitution to be amended.

Aboul Fotouh has refused to endorse either candidate and released a four-point program for Egypt’s next president — he said that Shafiq is Mubarak’s candidate, his participation is illegal and that Shafiq belongs in prison.  Moussa, even as voting took place in the first round, was already calling on Shafiq to drop out of the race.

Sabahi, for his part, has been even more emphatic in his refusal to endorse, joining protests last week in Tahrir Square and calling on the elections to be suspended.

Morsi finished first in the May election with 25% of the vote to just 24% for Shafiq; although Sabahi won Alexandria, Cairo and much of the urban electorate, he was edged into third place with just 21% support, followed by Aboul Fotouh in fourth place at 17% and Moussa in fifth place at 11%.

The disappointing shift in the presidential race has taken place against the backdrop of near-daily landmark twists and turns for the new Egyptian governing order:

But far from being an opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood to find common cause, public opinion since the first round has hardened against both Morsi and Shafiq– the runoff is now seen as a choice between two tired paths, neither of which have offered Egyptians much in the past four decades since Nasser: semi-authoritarian “security” versus the unknown Islamism of the Brotherhood, leaving the broad ‘civil state’ Madaniyya— Egypt’s secular moderates, liberal democrats, the underemployed youth, the underemployed urban and other pro-revolutionary Egyptians — without a true voice in the runoff:

Non-Islamist groups accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of dragging its feet over guarantees for a civilian state because it believes [Morsi] will win. In the meantime, the Brotherhood wants them to support [Morsi] under the banner of “saving of the revolution” without offering anything in return. Mistrust of the Brotherhood has grown since the revolt against Mubarak ended and, together with the Salafist Nour Party, it won nearly 70 per cent of parliamentary seats. Non-Islamist parties say the Brotherhood refused to support them during a series of bloody clashes against the military when they were demanding a clear timetable for the return to civil rule. They also claim the political Islamic group is seeking to monopolise the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary, effectively replicating the one-party system of rule under Mubarak’s National Democratic Party….

“The Brotherhood are here to convince us to vote for [Morsi],” said Tahani Lashin, an activist with the Popular Socialist Alliance Party. “But they refuse to give any concrete commitments, asking us to trust their promises and good intentions. We tried that many times before and they have never kept their word.”

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: June 12

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A boozy brawl in Canada over a new online sales law for wine.

Chávez kicks off his presidential campaign in earnest in Venezuela.

Mexican presidential candidates faced off Sunday night in a debate: Animal Político weighs in with reactions. Juan Manuel Henao reacts here.

The Leveson inquiry is starting to cleave the UK’s governing coalition.

Italy’s prime minister Mario Monti brings together the president and top political leaders in a crisis meeting as Europe enters another choppy period.

Neo-nazis on the rise in Saxony.

Putin’s anti-protest law is giving new life to Moscow protesters.

Rajoy meets the Spanish press, take two.

France

Final French parliamentary election results for first round

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France has now had a full day since learning the results of Sunday’s first round of the French parliamentary elections (France votes again in the second round this coming Sunday), and there’s really not much surprise in the aggregate result.

Much as predicted: the Parti socialiste of newly inaugurated François Hollande narrowly led the first round with 29% to just 27% for the somewhat demoralized and rudderless Union pour un mouvement populaire.

It seems likely that Hollande and his allies will control a parliamentary majority following Sunday’s second round (although it’s not certain) — the Parti socialiste is projected to win 270 to 300 seats to just 210 to 240 seats for the UMP.  In the best case scenario, the Parti socialiste and its allies would like to win 289 seats outright this Sunday.  If they wins less than 289 seats, however, they will be able to rely first on France’s Green Party, Europe Écologie – Les Verts, with which the Parti socialiste has an electoral alliance (projected to win 8 to 14 seats, largely because of the alliance) and then, if necessary, with the support of the Front de gauche (projected to win 14 to 20 seats), a group of communists and other radical leftists under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.  Hollande would prefer to avoid the latter, as many potential Front de guache deputies are members of France’s communist party who would attempt to pull Hollande’s agenda further leftward. Continue reading Final French parliamentary election results for first round →