Category Archives: Egypt

Egypt

Morsi declared winner of presidential runoff in Egypt

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So it’s Mohammed Morsi.

Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been elected the first civilian president in the first free and fair elections (presumably) in the modern history of Egypt, which were held last weekend.

I have to say, I was anticipating the fair chance of an announcement of Ahmed Shafiq as the “winner,” notwithstanding the actual vote tally.

Morsi won 51.73% to just 48.27% for Ahmed Shafiq, the former Air Force commander, former Mubarak prime minister and likely favored candidate of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has been a bit schizophrenic of late, to say the least, in its willingness to hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The announcement of Morsi’s victory comes after Morsi himself declared victory last Monday in the wake of unofficial counts showing him with a small, but meaningful, lead.  It’s still unclear why there’s been a delay in the announcement, which was supposed to come on Thursday.

Of course, Morsi has been elected president without anyone in Egypt knowing what that means.  Since no constitution has been drafted, it’s unclear whether Morsi will have any real power or will rather be a figurehead.

In the final hours of voting, however, SCAF announced amendments to the Constitutional Declaration promulgated in March 2011 granting itself the right to assume parliamentary powers, the right to approve the state budget, the right to veto the president’s decisions about declaring war and the right to intrude on the constitution-writing process.  On the previous Thursday, the Supreme Constitutional Court invalidated the January 2012 parliamentary elections, thereby suspending Egypt’s short-lived parliament.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 235 of the 508 parliamentary seats (another 121-seat bloc went to the more conservative, Salafist Al-Nour Party).

So with Morsi’s presidential victory, the Muslim Brotherhood would have been in a very strong position to, you know, actually have real power in Egypt.  Likely, the prospect of a transition to an Islamist government spooked SCAF, which has clumsily tried to rewrite the rules of the transition to give it a role akin to the Turkish military during much of the 20th century — embedded in the fabric of government (which meant that it continued to benefit from corruption and graft) and “guardian” of the secular nature of the Turkish state (which meant that, until the Erdoğan government in 2003, it would stage a coup upon the election of any Islamist government).

Morsi won 13.23 million votes out of the 26.42 million cast to just 12.35 million for Shafiq.  The election commission invalidated over 843,000 votes, less than the total margin of victory for Morsi.

It is now up to Morsi to show that he will be a president for all Egyptians, including the wide swath of pro-revolutionary voters — non-Islamists, secularists, moderates, liberals, nationalists — who supported Morsi as the only option in the face of Shafiq, whose potential election was largely seen as representing a step back to Mubarak-style semi-authoritarianism.

It is also now up to Morsi to work with SCAF to bring some conclusion to the turmoil of recent weeks and bring the transition from Mubarak to democracy (however imperfect) to a more settled conclusion, and to work with SCAF to oversee the re-instating of parliament or new elections for parliament, as well as to oversee the Constituent Assembly that will draft the constitution — before its suspension, the parliament had agreed to a body comprised 50% each of Islamists and non-Islamists.

Khairat al-Shater, the deputy chair of the Muslim Brotherhood, confirmed this week that his group and SCAF were conducting negotiations about the transfer of power.  Al-Shater, a popular former businessmen, who is seen as a pragmatic Islamist, was the Brotherhood’s first candidate for president, but was disqualified in April.

Whatever happens, it appears that SCAF, which is supposed to hand over power in a grand June 30 ceremony, will still play a significant role in Egypt’s Morsi era as well as its post-Mubarak era: Continue reading Morsi declared winner of presidential runoff in Egypt →

Egypt

Egypt to announce presidential election results Sunday at 3 pm

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Or so says the Presidential Elections Commission.

It’s been a bit of a hectic couple of weeks for Egypt, notwithstanding last Sunday’s presidential election runoff: it now has no parliament, no constitution, perhaps a dead former president and two potential living presidents, both of whom have declared victory.  And a very antsy Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that isn’t quite sure it’s ready to give up its transitional power.

In the meanwhile, we wait…

Egypt

Morsi and Shafiq both declare victory in Egypt, as SCAF moves put transition in doubt

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Events have been moving quite rapidly in Egypt over the past two days as the initial count of the presidential runoff have taken place, and there’s been no shortage of media coverage as the story continues to unfold. 

In the immediate aftermath of the race, Mohammed Morsi, the candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared victory on the strength of the Brotherhood’s tallies and the unofficial vote count that showed Morsi leading 52.5% to 4.7.5% over Ahmed Shafiq, his opponent, a former Air Force commander and the final prime minister of former president Hosni Mubarak, representing the ‘felool‘ (remnants) of the old regime.

Shafiq, however, backed by what remains of the technically-illegal National Democratic Party and viewed very much as the favored candidate of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, declared victory himself on Tuesday, throwing the result into further doubt.

The next step was supposed to be the announcement of final results on Thursday.  But on Tuesday, the President Elections Commission announced that it might wait until after Thursday to announce the full results.

Meanwhile:

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Egypt

Final Egypt election results

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Egypt’s Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission announced the final results yesterday for last week’s presidential election, confirming that Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi and former Mubarak prime minister Ahmed Shafiq will face off in a runoff to be held June 16 and 17, as was expected as informal results came in Friday.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect is the low turnout in what was Egypt’s first free and fair presidential election — at 46.42%, only 23.3 million voters cast ballots.

The Morsi and Shafiq camps were already preparing for the runoff Friday, even as the rest of Egypt — and the world — decried the ‘nightmare’ scenario of a runoff between an Islamist candidate and a candidate representing the ‘felool’ (remnants) of the Mubarak regime that fell in February 2012.

Egypt

Sabahi wins Cairo, but not by enough to enter runoff

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The long-awaited votes from Cairo appear to have been counted and the tally is as follows:

  • Hamdeen Sabahi, leftist neo-Nasserist — 993,464 (34.6%)
  • Ahmed Shafiq, former Mubarak official — 744,138 (25.9%)
  • Mohammed Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood candidate — 579,715 (20.1%)
  • Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, alternative moderate Islamist candidate — 553,200 (19.2%)

If true, it means that the heart of Egypt’s revolution turned to Sabahi as its candidate, indicating that they were too uncomfortable with the Islamist roots of Aboul Fotouh, despite his call for moderation, and also with the ‘felool’ background of Amr Moussa, the former secretary-general of the Arab League and decade-long foreign minister for Hosni Mubarak.

Official results have not yet been announced, but as Friday closes in Egypt, it appeared all but certain that Morsi would finish in first place nationally, followed by Shafiq in second, with Sabahi following very closely behind in third place and Aboul Fotouh not incredibly far behind in fourth.

As Egypt now starts to turn toward the Morsi-Shafiq runoff, it is a bit staggering to see that the leading candidate among the voters of Egypt’s largest city will not have a place in the second round.  As such, it will be interesting to see what indications Sabahi himself gives for the second round — it’s difficult imagining Sabahi endorsing Shafiq, but it’s just quite possible to see him uniting with Morsi for a wide anti-regime front in the runoff.  Note that Sabahi could also urge his supporters to abstain from the runoff — if they did so in large measure, it would vastly reduce the legitimacy of whichever candidate wins on June 17.

Sabahi was the only one of the five major candidates to be neither ‘felool’ associated with the Mubarak regime nor an Islamist, and he caught a wave of popular support at the very end of the campaign — you wonder what he might have done if he had a few more days to capitalize on that momentum.

He was, by and far, the most anti-Israel (and anti-US) of the five candidates as well — expect to hear some more deep-throated Israel-bashing from both Morsi and Shariq over the next month as they vie for his supporters, too.

Ultimately, I think Sabahi captured, with what I’ve called a ‘neo-Nasserite’ approach, a sense of all the pride lost in the past 40 years in Egypt — despite Gamal Abdel Nasser’s failure to build a long-lasting Arab union, Nasser’s victory in the Suez crisis showdown and his nationalist approach in newly-independent Egypt emboldened the Arab world and emboldened Egyptians to believe in a brighter future.  In the Nasser era, there was no disputing Egypt was at the heart of the Arab world — militarily, economically, culturally and intellectually.  Today, Egypt is the sick man of the Middle East — under the sclerotic regimes of Anwar Sadat in the 1970s and of Mubarak from the 1980s until last year, Egypt suffered a stalemate in the 1973 October War and has been stuck in a detente with Israel ever since — supported by Egypt’s military, but not by its populace and not exactly by its Arab neighbors.  Egypt has watched as the economic center of the Arab world slipped away from Cairo, first to Beirut, and then to the Emirates and in the oil wealth of the Saudi kingdom: Riyadh and Dubai are now more important financial centers than Cairo.  Intellectually, the Emirates and Qatar are leading the way to build educational institutions in the Middle East, not Egypt.  Furthermore, the days when Egyptian film and music dominated Arab culture — the days of Oum Kalthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez — are long gone.

Whoever wins the runoff is going to have to tap into exactly that sense of wounded pride — but also show a vision for how to recover that pride.

The tragedy of the anticipated runoff is that it includes the two candidates least likely to have the political skills or the ideological breadth to accomplish that.

Egypt

Felool me once, shame on you: Morsi-Shafiq ‘nightmare runoff’ starts to take shape

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As The Guardian pointed out earlier today, Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi, who appears to have finished first in this week’s Egyptian presidential election, posted a long, rambling video in English earlier this month.

You can see why some people have called him charisma-challenged, even taking into account that English is not his first language (although he did live in California as an academic for the better part of a decade).

But if, indeed, the runoff shapes up as a contest between Morsi and former Mubarak prime minister and Air Force commander Ahmed Shafiq, you’ll see a lot of people lunging toward Morsi as the only possible candidate.

To keep from erasing the gains of Egypt’s revolution, revolutionaries and liberals and secular reformers and pro-democracy forces will all have to swallow their anxiety about the Muslim Brotherhood, about joining hands with Salafists, about Morsi’s statements about making Egypt a more Islamic society.

Although returns from Cairo and Giza are not totally in, and there’s some hope that neo-Nasserist / leftist / nationalist Hamdeen Sabahi could eke out a surprise leap into second place, most news sources in Egypt are reporting that the Morsi-Shafiq runoff is all but settled.

Even today, in the most unlikely commentary I’ve seen so far, Elliott Abrams, a top foreign policy official Bush administration, has written a piece in The Weekly Standard entitled ‘Two Cheers for Morsi’, making the obvious, yet staggering point, that Mubarak well could have engineered a transition to Shafiq without Egypt having gone through the Tahrir Square protests and the ensuing 15-month drama:

There would be a historic irony if Shafik were to end up as president of Egypt. Had Mubarak and the Army played their cards better, Shafik might have been Mubarak’s successor without the uprising that Egypt has experienced. Had Mubarak realized and stated publicly that at 82 he could not run again, and said that Egypt was not a monarchy (or a fake one like Syria) and that his son Gamal would not succeed him, I believe the Egyptian revolt would never have taken place. Mubarak and the Army could have agreed on Shafik as their candidate: He was close to Mubarak and like him an Air Force general, and, as we now see, he is indeed the man the military have agreed should run and represent their interests.

As a spokesman for Shafiq rather chillingly told The New York Times today:

 “The revolution has ended,” he said. “It is one and a half years.”

Not out of affection for Morsi or zeal for Islamists, but rather out of the recognition that a vote for Shafiq is a vote to betray the revolution, the refrain in the coming days from many corners is going to be: We’re all Muslim Brothers now.

Egypt

Early returns indicate a likely Morsi-Shafiq runoff

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UPDATE: 11:25 a.m. Cairo time.  With nearly 20 million votes counted, it looks like Morsi is leading with 26.9% and Shafiq is second with 24.2%. Sabahi is in third place with 19.4%, Aboul Fatouh is close behind with 17.9%, and Moussa lags far in fifth place with 11.2%.

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It’s still not official, Giza and Cairo returns are yet to be counted, and early returns are just that — early — but it’s looking increasingly like the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohammed Morsi has done fairly well, and that his opponent in the June runoff could well be Hosni Mubarak’s former prime minister and Air Force commander and civil aviation minister Ahmed Shafiq after a first round that could see any of five candidates emerge for the June 16-17 runoff.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been increasingly confident as the counting has gotten underway — even in a country like Egypt, which is undergoing its first free and fair presidential election in history, campaigns generally are not this cocky unless they are pretty certain of victory.

If indeed Shafiq is headed for a top-two finish, it would explain why former Arab League secretary-general and former Mubarak foreign minister Amr Moussa picked such an odd fight with Shafiq, calling for Shafiq to drop out of the race in the middle of the two-day voting window.  In essence, Moussa may have been trying an 11th hour to paint Shafiq as the true ‘felool’ candidate of the race — the ‘remnants’ of the Mubarak era, attempting to undermine his voter base at the last minute.

As Ian Black wrote earlier for The Guardian, this is sort of a worst-case scenario for Egypt, a runoff between a ‘felool’ Mubarak deep-state retread versus the most conservative Islamist (and Muslim Brotherhood-approved) candidate in the race:

Mubarak’s last prime minister and former commander of the air force is described pejoratively by opponents as the “fuloul” – regime remnant – candidate. This run-off is the nightmare scenario because many people hate both men. A contest between them would be a highly polarised choice that would take Egyptians back to the bad old days before the revolution. The Brotherhood would mobilise massively behind Morsi, with the army and police supporting Shafiq. Violence would be highly likely to erupt. Abstention rates would soar.

A Morsi-Shafiq runoff would remind me of the Peruvian election in 2011, when leftist Ollanta Humala and Keiko Fujimori (daughter of the former Peruvian dictator) advanced to the second round runoff, while moderates Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Alejandro Toledo and Luis Castañeda split the moderate vote.  Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru’s Nobel laureate, likened it to a choice “between AIDS and cancer.”

If Egypt is indeed headed for a Morsi-Shafiq runoff, I think it indicates that we would have been otherwise seeing a runoff between two even more controversial candidates, had they not been disqualified in May: former Mubarak intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and Mubarak’s vice president in the final days of February 2011, and Salafist preacher Hazem Abu Ismail or perhaps even the Muslim Brotherhood’s first presidential candidate Khairat al-Shater.  Suleiman would have appealed to the same “security first” voters that Shafiq has attracted.  Abu Ismail was, as Morsi is now, the most conservative Islamist in the race — Abu Ismail was, in fact, much more conservative than al-Shater — in the same way, Morsi is a more conservative Islamist than his rival Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, (forget for a moment that Aboul Fotouh, confusingly, has been endorsed by the more conservative Salafist Al-Nour Party and not by the relatively more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, of which he was a member until just last year).

In any event, a Morsi-Shafiq runoff would indicate that the May 15 disqualifications were the absolute pivotal turning point in the presidential race, for what it’s worth.

It would also indicate that, despite Egyptian frustration with the parliament’s dithering after January elections that saw the Brotherhood win nearly half of the parliament’s seats, the Brotherhood is clearly the most potent and organized political force in Egypt today.  Morsi is neither the most charismatic nor the most accomplished candidate in the race — if he emerges not only in the runoff, but as the top choice in the first round, it will indicate that the Brotherhood has even more impressive organization and political muscle than we thought.

Egypt

Egypt runoff: who is Ahmed Shafiq?

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If vote counts continue on their current course, Ahmed Shafiq, 71, will finish in second place in the first round of the Egyptian presidential election with around 24% of the vote, thereby vaunting him into a runoff with the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi.

Shafiq, among the top five candidate vying for the Egyptian presidency, is the most ‘felool’ — the ‘remnants’  associated with the former Mubarak regime.  A senior commander in the Egyptian air force dating back to the days of the Sadat era, Shafiq served as commander of Egypt’s Air Force from 1996 to 2002.  Thereupon, he served as the minister of civil aviation from 2002 to 2011.

He was Mubarak’s final prime minister as well, having been appointed at the end of January 2011 in response to the Tahrir Square protests against Mubarak’s rule.

As such, he is seen not only as the premier ‘felool’ candidate, but also the favored candidate of the Egyptian army, and the favored candidate of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces that has governed Egypt during its transition since the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.  He is seen as the stand-in, in many ways, to Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s longtime intelligence chief and Mubarak’s final vice president.  Either one, in a runoff against an Islamist, must certainly represent the “deep state” of Egyptian public life. Continue reading Egypt runoff: who is Ahmed Shafiq? →

Egypt

Egypt runoff: Who is Mohammed Morsi?

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UPDATE 6/24/12: Follow the latest on the Egyptian runoff results here.

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It appears that Mohammed Morsi, 60, the candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party — the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood — has placed first in the first round of Egypt’s May presidential election with around 27% of the vote. 

So, who is Morsi? What does his success mean for Egypt? And what are his chances in the runoff? Continue reading Egypt runoff: Who is Mohammed Morsi? →

Egypt

Television ads in the Egyptian presidential race

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Via An Arab Citizen, Bassem Sabry’s must-read blog on Egypt and Arab politics, comes a digest of some of the televised ads leading up to today’s first-round presidential vote.

The one above is from Amr Moussa’s campaign.  It’s what you might expect from any presidential campaign, but it’s awe-striking that it’s happening in Egypt, the world’s most populous Arab nation. The chant at the end translates to  “We Can Face The Challenge.”

Here’s a very different kind of ad, from the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi — it’s obviously much more traditional in tone and content: Continue reading Television ads in the Egyptian presidential race →