Reposted from AUC Egypt Daily email newsletter
News at AUC December 7, 2011
In the first round of Egypt’s post-revolution
parliamentary elections, which were held in nine governorates including
Cairo and Alexandria, Islamist parties won 65 percent of all votes cast
for parties, with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party
winning 36.62 percent, followed by Al-Nur Party of the hardline Salafis
with 24.36 percent and Al-Wasat Party with 4.27 percent. Meanwhile, the
liberalist secular alliance, the Egyptian Bloc, secured 13.35 percent of
the votes, and the New Wafd Party got 7 percent.
“The coming struggle will most likely be between the Democrats and
Islamic fundamentalism,” said Ezzedine Fishere, distinguished lecturer
of political science. “That might be a more difficult and protracted
struggle, and will have an uncertain outcome. But it will be, I believe,
the last political obstacle standing between us Egyptians and a liberal
democracy.”
Results in the first round of elections have raised complex
questions about Egypt’s future and where it is heading in this new
political landscape – one in which Islamists seem to be the dominant
force in the country’s transition from military rule. “The scene in
Egypt may lead Egyptians to shortly replace police dictatorship with a
theocratic dictatorship,” said Said Sadek, a faculty member in the
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology. “The
task after the elections is immense, especially for the Egyptian
economy. A Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi government would further plunge
the economy to an abyss. People will rise up in a new revolution
against them but after more political and economic disasters would have
befallen the Egyptian economy, society, women, religious minorities and
human rights.”
Samer Soliman, assistant professor of political science,
expressed a different viewpoint. “The Muslim Brotherhood today is
different than that of a decade ago; it has developed and matured,” he
said. “Despite some violations, the Muslim Brotherhood worked hard and
has a strong base among people; therefore, the results are logical. The
liberalists should now organize themselves and work harder to secure a
similar popular base among the people.”
Soliman was quick to point out, however, that the “Muslim
Brotherhood now has the right to help in the formation of government,
but it will never have the right to infringe on human rights.”
While some chose to boycott the elections in light of the
recent violence in Tahrir, Khaled Fahmy, chair of the history
department, feels the elections were vital. “With these elections, Egypt
passed a huge step toward democracy,” he said. “Even though I am
against the boycott, I understand and respect those who were calling for
it. I do believe, however, that participating in elections is one way,
among many, including continuing the Tahrir sit-in, to force the Supreme
Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) out of the picture.”
Nevertheless, Fahmy is discontent with the run-up to the
elections. “The law governing elections is a disastrous one that
combines the worst features of the single-candidate district model with
the worst features of the proportional representation model,” Fahmy
explained, adding that “SCAF’s cavalier policies confused both voters
and candidates and effectively dissipated the efforts of the new
parties, as well as the more established ones, and distracted them to
side issues instead of giving them the opportunity to reach out to
voters, sharpen their messages, present credible electoral programs and
build grassroots organizations with their constituencies. I strongly
believe that the Egyptian people deserve a much better elections law
than this one, and that after the January 25 Revolution, we were
entitled to a much better, more substantial election campaign than what
we witnessed.”
With the second and third round of elections looming ahead, as well
as the drafting of a new constitution for the country and the 2012
presidential elections, Fishere predicts that Egypt will be witnessing
an intense struggle between the Islamists, the military and the
liberals. “This election has revealed the relative strength of the
different forces in society, and the Islamists now feel more confident,”
he said. “Egyptian Democrats who focused their energies on resisting
the rule of the military will now have to fight on two fronts.”
