Egypt's Presidential Elections: Pick Your Poison

My predictions:

1)   Amr Moussa

2)   Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

3)   Ahmed Shafik

4)   Mohamed Morsi

5)   Hamdeen Sabahi (although I didn’t even feel the need to mention his name in my previous post because I thought he had no chance)

How it turned out:

1)   Mohamed Morsi

2)   Ahmed Shafik

3)   Hamdeen Sabahi

4)   Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

5)   Amr Moussa

And that, my friends, demonstrates the futility of making predictions about anything relating to politics in Egypt!

For many people in Egypt – revolutionaries and liberals in particular – yesterday was a pretty terrible day. Of all the possible runoff matchups, a Mohamed Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood) / Ahmed Shafik (Mubarak regime) showdown is the most extreme, polarizing scenario. From talking to my friends yesterday, reading reactions on Facebook and Twitter, and watching a few television talk shows, it seems like most of the young, technology-literate crowd is going to end up voting for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi (albeit while holding their noses). Despite all the fervid talk of being forced to choose between “religious fascists” and “military fascists,” the thought of voting for someone from the old regime to avoid the scenario of having an MB-dominated government is simply unthinkable. Given the Morsi’s strong MB base and the support he will likely receive from moderate Islamists and Salafis who supported Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and liberals who supported Sabbahi, it’s hard for me to envision a scenario in which Shafik (who will be looking to attract votes from former Amr Moussa supporters) wins the presidency. If the liberals decide that it is not worth voting, however, then it is anybody’s guess as to who will pull through in the end.

If there is a bright side to this situation, it is that a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government may result in one of two possible positive outcomes. First, with the legislative and executive branches under their control, the MB will be well-positioned to make a serious effort to bring the military under the government’s control. The military will not easily submit to government oversight of its budget and economic holdings, but this issue is without a doubt one of the most important ones that Egypt faces today. The Muslim Brotherhood may choose to cut a deal with the military in which they essentially agree to stay out of each others’ business, but, even if such a deal were to happen, their conflicting interests may eventually become so acute that they have no choice but to confront each other. Second, with the entire civilian government under its control, the MB will bear complete responsibility for what happens in Egypt over the next several years. Given the current economic crisis, the lack of a constitution, and the crippling of state institutions such as the police force to the point where they have become completely ineffective, this complete responsibility may turn into a curse instead of a blessing. Assuming that the MB allows for free and fair elections a few years down the road, Egyptians will have a chance to toss them out of power if they are unhappy with the direction the country has taken under the MB’s leadership.

On the other hand, the nightmare scenario for liberals is that the brotherhood uses its newfound power to reorient the old system to serve their own interests rather than reform it. If it so desires, the MB could adopt many of the old constitutional and legal tools that Mubarak used to consolidate his power and effectively minimize all political opposition. In my opinion, such a move wouldn’t lead to a theocracy, as many people fear, but it would result in the MB becoming the new version of the Mubarak regime.

A few other observations from yesterday:

1)   What was the main reason for the Muslim Brotherhood’s success? Its ground game! There is simply no better political organization in Egypt right now in terms of mobilizing its base and making sure that its supporters have a way to get to the polls. A friend of mine who lives in a small town in the Nile Delta, for example, told me that the MB had 15 tuk-tuks (rickshaw taxis) and 5 microbuses bringing people to the polls all day long.

2)   Hamdeen Sabbahi’s popularity shot up in the last few weeks as he took on the title of “revolutionary candidate.” I didn’t include him in my post a few days ago because I figured that, even though a number of my friends supported him, his popularity would be limited to the educated, urban middle and upper classes. As the parliamentary elections proved, these classes have relatively little voting power compared to the Islamists. Nevertheless, Sabbahi’s strong showing (as well as Aboul Fotouh’s) is one positive thing that the liberals can take away from this otherwise dark day. Of course Sabbahi, Aboul Fotouh, and the other liberal candidates are now regretting their decision not to unite around one consensus choice – if they had done so, they would have had one of their own in the runoff.

3)   Whence the Salafis? After their surprisingly strong showing in the parliamentary elections, the Salafis (hardline Islamic fundamentalists) didn’t field a candidate in the presidential elections. While a number of Salafi groups supported Aboul Fotouh, they clearly did not turn out as strongly for him as hoped. There is no way that the Salafis would support Shafik, an avowed Islamist-hater, in the runoff, but it is unclear if they will come out in large numbers to support Morsi. The Salafis and MB are intense competitors when it comes to fighting for control over the state’s religious and educational institutions, and the Salafis generally view the MB as having deviated from the true Islam in favor of pragmatism and compromise in attempt to gain political power. Hoping to gain some insight into the Salafi take on the current political situation, a few friends and I went to hear the Friday sermon at a popular Salafi mosque on the outskirts of Cairo yesterday. I was surprised to hear the sheikh directly criticize the democratic process as a whole (and elections in particular) as un-Islamic, basically arguing that splitting into political parties and competing in elections runs counter to the Quran’s call for unity among Muslims. While nearly all of the Salafis shared this view before the revolution, many of them abandoned it after the revolution and dove headfirst into the political sphere. There has been some evidence, however, that some of them may be reconsidering that decision. Given that Salafis make up 20-25% of the electorate, this will be an important constituency to watch over the next few weeks.

Suffice it to say that there will be plenty of intriguing developments between now and the runoff on June 17^th and 18^th. In light of my completely erroneous previous prediction for how things would shake out, I realize that I have very little credibility with which to predict the winner of the runoff. For what it’s worth, though, I think that Mohamed Morsi will be Egypt’s first democratically-elected president.

Today is my last day in Egypt, so this post will likely be my last (at least for now). To say that I’ve had a fascinating year here would be an understatement. Egypt is a colorful, amazing, and frustrating place all at the same time, and I hope that I have managed to convey at least a little bit of that unique character through this blog. Thanks for reading, and inshallah (God willing) I’ll be back here before long.

Living in the Palm of a Ghost

After spending nearly a full year in Egypt, I am about to bid the country farewell. This time next week I will be in San Francisco enjoying a combination of food, baseball, and fog – a far cry from the oppressive desert heat of the Cairo summer. Before leaving, however, I, along with 85 million Egyptians, am about to witness this country’s first ever competitive presidential election. Voting will commence on Wednesday morning and extend through Thursday evening, with the results to be announced soon thereafter. While this is only the first round (the top two vote recipients will face off in a runoff election on June 17^th and 18^th), the excitement and anticipation in the country are palpable. As my Egyptian dialect teacher told me last week, “we are living in the palm of a ghost [an Egyptian saying meaning that everything is very tenuous, nothing is for certain], no one knows what to expect!”

Indeed, the outcome of this first round is going to be as close to a complete surprise as possible. There are no reliable public opinion polls in Egypt, and, while most people have a general sense that the election is going to be between four main candidates (Amr Moussa, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of the Arab League, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, former MB member turned liberal and Salafi favorite Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, and Mubarak crony and former Minister of Civil Aviation Ahmed Shafik), it is anybody’s guess as to who will make it into the runoff.

Whatever the outcome, Egyptians have thrown themselves into this campaign season with unmatched fervor. Literally every time I walk down the street past a café or overhear discussions in public areas, the subject is always politics! Taxi drivers love to expound on their reasons for voting for one candidate or another, and the newspapers and television talk shows are full of stories about the candidates and the campaign. These past two days have been deemed a “media blackout,” but that has done little to dampen the debate. When I told a friend of mine that I thought the blackout was a ridiculous idea, he responded “Don’t worry, Egyptians are naturally absurd like this: when there is a curfew we go down to the street to see what’s happening, and when there’s a strike we stay home instead of going to protest, so of course when there’s a media blackout everyone will just talk about politics more!”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a chance to see all of the main candidates in person. I wrote about the Mohamed Morsi rally I attended here, I heard Moussa and Shafik speak at luncheons held by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt (where I have been interning for the past few months), and I attended a political rally-cum-festival last weekend held by the Aboul Fotouh campaign.

Like Morsi, Moussa had very little charisma and his rhetorical style was what I imagine Professor Binns (the “History of Magic” professor in the Harry Potter books known for his endless droning) would sound like. Nevertheless, Moussa has turned out to be highly popular because of his long tenure in government (which he has diligently tried to portray as endowing him with experience rather than associating him with the Mubarak regime). He is the John McCain equivalent in this race – old, a known entity, and running on his long record of civil service.

Shafik, on the other hand, is making no bones about his connection to the old regime. At the AmCham luncheon he made his distaste for the revolution clear, speaking of the “huge crisis” that Egypt was currently facing as a result of doing away with Mubarak. Shafik is running on a security and stability platform, claiming that security will return in “100 days – maximum!” if he becomes president, and there is little doubt that he plans to achieve that goal by letting the police force loose as Mubarak used to do and allowing it to round up anyone and everyone it so desires. Like Mubarak, Shafik is also fiercely opposed to the Islamists and hinted that he would take steps to push them out of politics (primarily by instituting a presidential system and effectively stripping the Parliament of its power). As you might expect, many of the revolutionaries are apopleptic at the possibility of a Shafik presidency. A friend of mine told me that if Shafik wins, he and all of his friends would go down to Tahrir Square with only two possible outcomes in mind: “Either we overthrow him, or he kills us. I would rather die than live in an Egypt where Ahmed Shafik is president.” Despite that fervor, however, I have met a surprisingly large number of people who plan to vote for Shafik.

And finally, we come to Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the closest thing to Obama that Egypt has to offer. Fotouh was a longtime Muslim Brotherhood member, although he was from a decidedly more liberal wing of the brotherhood than Mohamed Morsi. Soon after the revolution, he split off from the group in order to run for the presidency, taking a large chunk of the MB youth with him. Since then, he has assembled a coalition of youth who see him as the most revolutionary candidate, liberals who see him as a pseudo-liberal candidate who has a realistic chance of winning, and Salafis who like that he comes from an Islamist background and don’t want the MB to control both the parliament and the presidency. A true “big tent” campaign. As expected, Aboul Fotouh has been accused of pandering to the different constituencies supporting him, and many liberal and Christian friends are also highly suspicious of his history in the MB (“once a brother, always a brother” is a common refrain). Nonetheless, Aboul Fotouh seems to have been steadily rising in popularity, and the rally I went to last weekend was well attended. In classic Aboul Fotouh form, he stated in his speech that he wanted to create a “civil democratic state built upon a civilized Islamic foundation” - every word in that sentence, of course, was targeted at a particular constituency.

Unlike the parliamentary elections, which hinged much more on a candidate’s local ties and reputation in a particular community, the presidential elections are going to be the first real indicator of the overall political mood in the country. At the same time, however, these elections are certainly not an end in and of themselves. Whoever takes power will inherit an Egypt that still does not have a coherent governing framework, is plagued by the military’s “state within a state” of economic and security interests, and currently faces a huge economic and budgetary crisis. For now, though, it’s time to let the voting party begin!

Finally, here's my off-the-cuff prediction for the first ever competitive presidential elections in Egypt's history:

1) Amr Moussa

2) Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

3) Ahmed Shafik

4) Mohamed Morsi

           

Election Season in Egypt

Catchy slogans, campaign rallies, seemingly sane and intelligent people making outrageous statements…it’s election season! The election I’m talking about, though, is not between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. No, this is presidential politics [cue the remix music] Egyptian style!

Last night, a few Egyptian friends and I attended a campaign rally held by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) for their party leader-turned-presidential candidate Mohamed Morsy. Before diving into the details of the rally, I’ll provide a little background for those of you who have not been able to keep up with the circus that Egyptian politics has become of late. In an effort to assuage fears that the MB wanted to immediately establish an Islamic theocracy in Egypt, the group’s leaders pledged that they would only contest a portion of the seats in the parliamentary elections and would not, under any circumstances, field a presidential candidate.

Mohamed Morsy

They did not live up to either of those pledges. After fielding candidates in nearly every parliamentary district, the group announced about a month ago that they had reviewed their earlier pledge not to field a presidential candidate and decided that “new political developments” forced them to put forward one of their own for the presidency. The MB’s chosen candidate, Kheirat al-Shater, did not pass muster, however, in the eyes of the country’s electoral commission (which by most accounts was heavily influenced by the old regime and the ruling military council).  After Shater was disqualified from the race on what was essentially a technicality, the MB scrambled to put forward Mohamed Morsy as an alternative. He’s spent the past few weeks campaigning throughout the country, but from what I saw last night it’s easy to see why he didn’t get the nod in the beginning.

The rally was held at the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As, reputedly Cairo’s oldest, in a working class neighborhood just south of the center of the city. While the rally was technically supposed to begin at 7:00 PM, we arrived at around 8:30 (most official events here run on “Egypt time,” meaning that they begin two to three hours after their supposed start time), just in time for evening prayers. As I sat in the mosque waiting for my friends to finish praying, an older man greeted me, declaring to me ,“I grew up in this mosque! I joined the brotherhood when I was this tall [making a gesture to indicate that he joined at a young age], I grew up a brother, and I will die a brother! Islam is always first!” Similar to most political rallies in the US, nearly all of the attendees seemed to be ardent MB supporters.

My friends completed their prayers, and we, along with hundreds of other men, spilled out of the mosque and onto the street in front of it where the rally was being held. A few words about the set-up of the event: the first thing that caught my eye was that the MB, apparently with an eye towards not causing a major traffic snarl by blocking off an entire street to hold the rally, had decided to put the stage and chairs on half the street, leave the other half open for traffic, and then put the spillover crowd on the opposite sidewalk! As a result, a steady stream of buses, trucks, and cars through the middle of the rally kept up throughout the night. Secondly, this was a gender-segregated rally. The chairs directly in front of the stage were occupied by men, and the sizable contingent of women were relegated to a spot on the sidewalk between the mosque and the stage (essentially at a 45 degree angle from the stage). When I asked my friend why the women didn’t have as good a view as the men did, he shrugged and said that it must be because they just ran out of space to fit them all in the front. I decided that it would be better not to press him on the issue.

As to the campaign rally itself, it actually bore somewhat of a resemblance to what you would expect at a campaign event in the US. Loud music (a mixture of Islamic and national songs), lots of flag-waving, campaign literature being distributed, etc. Morsy and his entourage didn’t arrive until about 9:30 (even presidential candidates get stuck in Cairo’s traffic), so the emcee led the crowd in a number of chants, such as “the people want Morsy to be president!” and “all the people call for Morsy to be the president of the country!” As the wait for him to arrive dragged on, I made up one of my own: “Where are you, oh Mohamed Morsy? I still can’t find a chair!” (all of those slogans rhyme in Arabic, by the way).

When Morsy finally showed up, everyone greeted him with whoops and cheers. Sitting next to him on the stage were a number of MB bigwigs, including Essam el-Erian (current MP and former member of the MB’s Guidance Bureau) and Safwat Hegazi, an outspoken imam and televangelist who has major street cred for being one of the first people to publicly come out in favor of the revolution in January of last year.

The first speaker of the night, however, was a woman (who also had a seat alongside Morsy). While I didn’t catch her name, she gave a ten minute speech about the special role of women in Islam, referring to the important role women played in the time of the prophet Mohamed and calling on the women in the audience to continue to work hard to make Egypt a more Islamic country. She yielded the floor to Essam el-Erian, who delivered a speech in impeccable formal Arabic that was long on flowing rhetoric and short on actual content. Perhaps the most rousing speech of the night was delivered by Hegazi, who drew a huge rise out of the crowd with his calls for the toppling of the ruling military council. He also drew another loud roar and a sustained period of slogan-chanting when he declared that the Egyptians would work with all Arabs to liberate Jerusalem. As a whole, however, the anti-Israel rhetoric that is so common on the Egyptian street was largely absent from the night’s dialogue.

And then it was Morsy’s turn. Like his colleague el-Erian (and unlike the other speakers), Morsy spoke exclusively in formal Arabic. He spent the first ten minutes of his speech touching on broad, nationalist themes, which included the idea of a “national renaissance,” and he spoke in general terms about the need to harness Egypt’s resources and the power of Egyptian workers to bring about economic and social development. After those first ten minutes, however, most of the crowd was losing interest. Unlike the other speakers, Morsy spoke in a monotone and stood in place on the stage, not using any hand gestures or other rhetorical devices to drum up interest in what he had to say. That being said, what happened next was absolutely shocking. The emcee, who had been silent throughout the previous speeches, suddenly interrupted Morsy when he was in the middle of a sentence and started shouting into the microphone “the people want Morsy for president!”, to which the crowd half-heartedly responded in kind. Morsy went on to drone on for another ten minutes, but the closest he got to laying out any kind of specific program was to say that he had convened a meeting of Very Smart People to study all of the problems that Egypt currently faces and come up with solutions. What exactly those problems are or what solutions he might be promoting are still unclear. Twenty minutes into his speech, el-Erian seemed to be dozing off in his chair next to Morsy, and a shouting match broke out on the street next to the stage which led a large portion of the crowd to take their waning attention off of Morsi and flock toward the bickerers. The emcee, again unprompted, broke in with more slogans just as Morsy was in the middle of explaining how Egypt’s foreign relations must be based on “mutual respect and shared interests.”

It was just that kind of night for Morsy. Since this was the first time I’ve seen him in person, I can’t say whether he was having a bad night or whether this is just who he is. I suspect, however, that the latter is true. Morsy wasn’t the MB’s first choice, he is not very well known outside of MB and political circles, and he doesn’t have the charisma and presence that you would expect in a presidential candidate. Despite the fact that the MB won 40% of the seats in Parliament, the latest opinion poll (which, admittedly, is of questionable reliability) had his level of support at just 3.6%! While there are still a few weeks to go before the first round of the elections, Morsy faces a Herculean task if he is to win one of the top two spots to advance to the runoff in June.

While most of the attendees at the rally were diehard MB supporters, the three friends who came with me left unconvinced. Riding the subway home, I asked them what they thought of the rally. “I’m still undecided,” my friend Mohamed said, “but I’m definitely not voting for that guy!”