Acid test for the Egyptians

two presidential candidates.
With the stakes for the revolution being higher than ever, the results raise more questions than answers.

In themselves, the elections — the third (behind Parilaimentary and Shura council elections) in the painstaking initial process of democratic reconstruction — are a landmark event for Egyptian and Arab democratic reconstruction.
The figures speak for themselves: 41 percent of 50 million registered voters, divided over 13 100 districts, and a total of 9 293 polling-stations. Thirteen candidates contested the first round in May, competing to be the country’s first popularly and democratically elected president. In particular, its significance for Libya and Tunisia cannot be emphasised enough.

Failure here would cast a shadow over progression in the two other Arab Spring states, and its spectre will also hang over how this fervour unfolds in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. Failure for this revolutionary moment could just be around the corner — the return of the folool (relics or remnants of the Mubarak regime) to the apex of power.

To an extent, there is a quasi-illegal aspect in these elections according to the country’s law of disqualification, designed to bar the folool from returning to power, Ahmed Shafiq’s candidacy should never have been allowed. It will remain one of the mysteries of these elections and the whole process of transition in Egypt as to why Mubarak’s last prime minister was given the green light to contest the elections — as was the case with Omar Sulayman — the democratically elected parliament was overruled in its decision to ban Shafiq.

If Dr Mohammed Morsi prevails in the mid-June run-off elections — which is very likely — the result may sway Tunisian and Libyan Islamists to borrow a leaf from Egypt’s Ikhwan (Islamic Brotherhood) and field their own presidential candidates.
The stakes are high for Egyptians, the Arabs and even the world. The United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran will be watching these polls very closely.

The revolution: A lame duck?
The results in the presidential run-off thus far have been shocking, and worries a folool could win, although alarming, have reminded the electorate not to become complacent, and to partake in voting.

It is a rude awakening in a constituency increasingly noted for polarisation and revolutionary wariness, discerning a decrease in voter turnout compared to the previous two elections for parliament and shura council. Those who resisted and defiantly ousted Mubarak now face the prospect of a return of a key figure in the ousted regime that was being groomed to replace Field Marshal Tantawi. This is akin to the last nail in the coffin of a revolution let down by all actors involved in the transition phase. The rude awakening apart, the results are not all bad news.

This is what the Egyptian presidency has revealed: massive endorsements of figures like Hamdeen Sabbahi, till six months ago no more than political footnote, bodes well for the future of political parties.
His ranking in third place, with more than a fifth of the total vote, qualifies him to lead a socialist/Nasserist political party. The same goes for Abdel Moneim

Abolfotouh, who polled more than 18 percent of the vote. Better still, if these two individuals coalesce, they can enliven Egypt’s political map for the better.
However, ideological differences may not favour such a scenario.
Under pressure from various quarters, a pseudo-revolutionary narrative was initiated under the auspices of the Shafiq campaign. The idiom recycled the fear-mongering of the ousted regime using the tropes of an Islamist take-over of Egypt and the spectre of total chaos in the country’s streets.

What distinguished Shafiq from other candidates in this campaign was a thinly veiled counter-revolutionary posturing that attempted to refashion him as a man of the state able to ensure political stability in the face of post-revolutionary disorder.
Against this background, those who voted for Shafiq responded to cues that struck deep-seated chords in Egyptian society pandering to actual or imagined fears: a

large number of Copts, and the wide spectrum of the folool and their clients.

Morsi’s campaign pandered to the metaphor of “Nahdah” (renaissance), an Islamist logo par excellence. However, even this was not in these elections electrifying. Their brilliance in mobilisation and organisation and getting the voters of their core constituency to polling stations — got the Ikhwan and Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) enough votes to give Morsi pole position.
Yet even this result belies ambivalence with potentially perilous implications — has the revolutionary ethos and popular support of the January 25 revolution worn thin? It is as if the transition has become a bittersweet interval in the post-Mubarak reconstitution of the Egyptian polity.

In this vein, the Ikhwan are not blameless.
They have partly played ball with the very forces whose counter-revolutionary machinations have since the revolution been obviously conspicuous.