Tag Archives: historic

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%.

* * * * *

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

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 →

Egypt

Second day of voting ends in Egyptian presidential election

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With the voting in the second day of Egypt’s presidential election coming to a completion at 9 pm Cairo time, various camps are spinning “exit polls” — Al Jazeera is tweeting an exit poll of 60,000 voters and reporting that Mohammed Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood candidate) leads with 25%, Secular Arab Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi follows with 22%, Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh at 21% and former Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa at 19%, which would leave former Mubarak prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and the eight remaining candidates with just 13% of the vote.

But if no one thought polls were reliable prior to the election, certainly no one expects exit polls to be accurate.

There is a general sense, however, in coverage of the various camps of the five frontrunners, that Morsi seems to be doing better than expected and Moussa worse.  There’s just no way to know, though, until the votes have been counted, a process which will start tonight — results are expected by Sunday.

Meanwhile, Moussa and Shafiq have gotten into a very public spat while voting has been ongoing, with Moussa loudly calling on Shafiq to drop out of the race.  Shafiq was pelted with stones and shoes yesterday as he cast his ballot, but otherwise the elections have been conducted without violence.

Egypt

Abdoul Fatouh v. Moussa v. Morsi v. Sabahi v. Shafiq: five vie for two runoff slots in unpredictable Egyptian race

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Egyptians go to the polls today and tomorrow to cast votes in a presidential election unprecedented in not only Egypt, but the Middle East.

Since the disqualification of three of the top candidates just one month ago, the bumpy race has settled into a vibe that has electrified the 82 million citizens of the world’s largest Arab nation, the latest and, perhaps, greatest act in a drama that began with the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that led to the downfall of longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. 

Polls have shown any number of candidates in the lead, and two weeks ago, two of the presumed frontrunners, Amr Moussa (above, right) and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh (above, left), sparred in Egypt’s first-ever presidential debate.  But they are not the only candidates with a chance to win the presidency.

The truth is that, for all the interest — both in Egypt and abroad — no one knows who will emerge as Egypt’s next president (which is in itself a fascinating statement on the success Egypt’s democratic transition).  The only safe prediction is that this week’s vote will result in no candidate winning over 50% of the vote, necessitating a runoff among the top two winners on June 16 and 17.

Any of the top five candidates could advance to the runoff — including also Mohammed Morsi, Hamdeen Sabahi and Ahmed Shafiq: Continue reading Abdoul Fatouh v. Moussa v. Morsi v. Sabahi v. Shafiq: five vie for two runoff slots in unpredictable Egyptian race →