Egypt elections beyond ideology: A return to common sense politics

 

Egypt elections beyond ideology: A return to common sense politics

By   Hamid Eltgani Ali and Warigia Bowman December 13, 2011, 5:00 pm

The first round of Egyptian parliamentary elections is drawing to a close, but in another sense, Egyptian multi-party politics is just beginning. After a partially successful revolution, Egypt is now on a crash course to multi-party democracy. Other countries that have gone through major political transitions from dictatorship to democracy generally have had decades to make the transition. The question many Western observers are asking now is what shape will Egypt’s nascent democracy take? Will it more closely resemble the secular Turkey, or the more theocratic Iran?  As news reports have indicated, the results of the first round of elections have been discouraging for those who support a secular state in Egypt. Based on our quantitative analysis of publicly available ex post election data after the first round of voting, the Islamists performed exceptionally well in comparatively rural areas with low political capital such as Fayoum and Luxor. By contrast, liberal and moderate parties, taken altogether, won only 27 percent of total votes and performed relatively well in highly urbanized areas of high political capital like Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said. Liberal candidates are likely to do worse in the second and third rounds of voting which will be held in parts of rural Egypt that are likely to be less progressive and politically sophisticated than Cairo, the Red Sea and The Delta. Given results in the first round of the Egyptian elections, what lessons can be learned? Given what we  have seen in the first round of the Egyptian elections,  what lessons can be learned? First of all, liberal parties made a serious miscalculation by running numerous separate lists. Many of the parties in the Revolution Continues Alliance (RCA) withdrew from the Bloc allegedly due to inter-party conflicts. The only liberal party that has done well in the elections has been The Egyptian Bloc, which has captured 14 percent of the available seats thus far. Liberal parties are doing even worse under the single-winner system. In the first round of runoffs, 47 of the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidates (Freedom and Justice Party) made it to the runoffs. The far right Islamist party Al Nour has secured 27 candidates in the first round of runoffs. By contrast, the Egyptian Bloc only had 9 candidates in runoffs. The liberal and moderate parties need to resolve their differences and work as a unit to gain any seats. The second lesson to be learned is that Egyptians have not yet embraced an ideological approach to politics. The conservative right and liberal left categories which categorize Europe simply do not apply well here, accordingly labels and ideologies are not useful campaign tools. Rather, parties can more easily be divided along a crucial axis: support for a secular state, or support for a religious (Islamic) state. The second lesson to be learned here, then, all parties must figure out what matters to them and campaign on issues,  like how they will reduce unemployement, not ideologies. The Egyptian people do not know what “social justice,” means yet. But they do know what a hungry stomach feels like.

The Rest of Egypt

I know it is hard to believe, but outside Tahrir, life goes on as usual. The only thing that is frustrating is the constant disruption in schedules.

I spent the last few days in Luxor and Aswan, and it is very peaceful there, with a sizeable number of European tourists. Also, where I live, in El Rehab in Cairo, it is quiet.

AUC will close tomorrow for the elections. 

~WMB

Luxor Lately

Article first published as Luxor Lately on Blogcritics.

Luxor (the ancient city of Thebes) is a beautiful city of approximately 500,000 people. The streets are clean and broad. Horse drawn carriages and donkey drawn carts share the streets with slow moving vehicles. The Luxor Railway station is sparkling, decorated in the typical red granite of Egypt, with impressive bas reliefs drawn from the many temples in the area.

Words do not do justice to the grandiosity of the Luxor temple. The columns are several stories tall. The statues and hieroglyphics have lasted for over 3000 years. What building built today could last that long?  The near absence of rain certainly helped to preserve the temple and its statues, but one can only marvel at the ancient Egyptian mastery of engineering. In late April, the reformed Egyptian Antiquities Council announced that a 3400 year old statute of King Ahmenhotep III was unearthed in Luxor.

The main Luxor temple was unusual in that it first housed a temple for ancient Egyptian Gods. Then, a church was built on the Temple grounds. Later, a Mosque, which is still operational, was built on the ruins of part of the temple. For a period, both the Mosque and the Church operated simultaneously within the temple grounds. There is a lesson regarding peaceful coexistence of multiple faiths inside that temple.

In Upper Egypt, remnants of the old regime still cling to power. In late April. violence erupted between supporters of the old National Democratic Party, and the January 25 Revolution Youth Coalition during a rally for Amr Moussa , Secretary General of the Arab League and a potential presidential candidate for Egypt. Moussa has pledged to prioritize the region of Upper Egypt.

I asked my guide to tell me how the government of Luxor has been functioning since the Revolution. My guide Khaled lives in Luxor with his family. The Governor of Luxor, Samir Farag has been replaced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Allegedly, Farag is implicated in the corruption of the Mubarak era.  The SCAF has replaced 14 out of 26 regional governors since the revolution. In mid April, hundreds of thousands of protesters demanded the speedy trial of Mubarak and the replacement of governors he had appointed. The SCAF made the decision to replace these governors one day after the massive protest. As Khaled pointed out, the head of the snake has been removed, but the body is still there, and writhing, with enough venom in it to do damage. He said that in Luxor, electricity and water are functioning, but many government services are barely being attended to.

While in Luxor, I saw many many signs with the photo of a beautiful young girl about my daughter's age: five years old.Apparently, she has been abducted. According to Al Masry Al Youm, two children have dissapeared from their homes, and several child abductions have been attempted. Apparently, Luxor has been plagued by a state of lawlessness in the past few months. As I mentioned, one of Mubarak's moves to thwart the revolution was to pull the police from the streets. A small number of police are back on the streets, but according to my tour guide Khaled, they are not really doing their jobs lately.  The Local People's Council has warned of a continuing deterioration of security in the area, and has asked for more police to be deployed, to combat thuggery and thievery.

Changes are coming to Upper Egypt in this post-revolutionary period, and Luxor, as the nation's tourism capital, will be an important part of this change. In a good year, as many as 11 million tourists can pass through Egypt, and the vast majority of them will make a stop in Luxor. This is a city to watch in the coming months as Egypt moves tentatively toward democracy.

Edfu

I am in Luxor right now. I am on a boat, taking the obligatory Nile Cruise, so I have limited Internet access. while checking my email today, I was very pleased to see this article in the New York Times regarding a predominantly "liberal" protest that took place in Cairo.

The protesters called on the military council now ruling Egypt to end the practice of sending civilians to military trials, to expedite legal action against former President Hosni Mubarak and his associates, and to start governing with some civilian presidential council.

But now, I am in Upper Egypt, so it is a good chance to check in on the rest of Egypt. There are 80 million people in Egypt, and only 20 million of them live in Cairo.

Business is very low on the tourist areas in the Nile. The tour guides tell me that the coverage of the Imbaba Clashes, in which 12 people were killed, hurt tourism more than the Revolution, in which 800 people were killed. The temples on this trip seem full to me, but my guides tell me they are nearly empty. I went to the papyrus store today, and the salesman nearly begged me to buy things. I bought two small pieces, but I could smell his hunger for business, as he offered me three pieces priced at 550 LE for 350 LE. A moment of sorrow.

My daughter fell in love with a horse today. Her name is Aziza. She pulled our horsedrawn carriage to the temple of Edfu. Apparently, during the revolution, the citizens of Edfu demanded that the only way one can get to Edfu Temple is by horsedrawn carriage. This reduces the number of cars on the road, and guarantees nearly full employment for the citizens of Edfu. I like this tradition. It is scenic, and it slows the flow of tourists into the temples. We gave the driver a few extra pounds to buy Aziza some extra oats. A moment of joy.

Back in the MASR

Dear readers

I have been gone for ten days for some much needed rest and relaxation. The last few months have been completely exhilarating, and also completely exhausting. I spent some time in the US, tending to my garden, sipping on mint juleps, and enjoying time with my husband.

Back here in Egypt, the weather is perfect, 75 degrees farenheit, sunny and perfectly dry. The grass is green, and I awoke to birdsong. The sky is not quite blue, it has a tinge of grey in it, and the clouds are not distinct, but wispily intermingled in the background.

The weather has an edge to it, as if the sky is saying "enjoy this bout of spring, it won't last long." The coming months will be fiercely hot.

In my neighborhood I noticed for the first time that some of the palm trees in El Rehab are fake. Large metal contraptions with artificial palm fronds, topped by radio transmitters of some sort. I wonder what their function is?

Things are fairly quiet in Egypt politically, compared to weeks gone by. There is discussion of transferring Mubarak to a military hospital. The Libyan civil war rages on, with heavy fighting in Misurata and Libya's western mountains. Muslim Brotherhood members believe they are under attack by Islamophobes.  Mohammed Hassan argues that "He said the media is spiralling out of control, adding that there should be a kind of media freedom that respects the teachings of Islam." A 3400 year old statue of Amenhotep of King Amenhotep III has been discovered  in Luxor, as well as a black granite statue of the goddess Sekmet. Popular committees from around Egypt met in a demonstration in Tahrir Square on Friday afternoon in an attempt to inaugurate a prolonged coordinated effort.

While I was in the US, my husband remarked that I was spending money like there was no tomorrow. Perhaps because in the past few months, it has often felt that way. WMB