The recent twists and turns of the
upcoming presidential elections in Egypt rival in
literary merit the plot of a story from One
Thousand and One Nights. Two major new
candidates joined the race unexpectedly in the
last two weeks before the registration deadline;
others were barred from participating for
different reasons. As the military and the Muslim
Brotherhood jostle for power, surprises seem to be
stacked around every corner, and we have to wonder
what the situation will look like by May 23-24,
the scheduled dates of the first round of voting.
The vote is a part of the broader
transition of power between the military and a
civilian government which is expected to take over
in months. The Muslim Brotherhood already won
convincingly the parliamentary elections, and went
back on its earlier pledge not to field a
presidential candidate; the military seemingly
responded by using its connections in the
judiciary to challenge the makeup of
the panel which will
draft the new Egyptian constitution and determine
the balance of power between the different
branches. [1] The Constituent Assembly, voted in
by the Islamist-dominated parliament, had already
come under harsh criticism and had provoked
walk-outs by secularists and Copts.
Meanwhile, the economic situation
continues to deteriorate, and as the struggle for
power, complete with deals under the table and
mutual mistrust, spreads to more and more
institutions, the presidential elections seem to
have lost a large part of their significance.
A dizzying multitude of forces, foreign
and domestic, known and shadowy, is waiting in the
wings to join the fray. Every faction, without
exception, seems prone to splinter into smaller
factions, and the potential for chaos looms; in
some ways, minus the most stunning excesses of the
Reign of Terror which currently seem unlikely to
repeat, one is tempted to think of the chaos
following the French revolution as a useful
paradigm for what is happening on the Nile.
As imperfect as the comparison is, it is
strengthened by several circumstances: in both
cases a regional power with a stable tradition of
state structure was decapitated by a popular
revolt; there was no clear leader to step in, and
shadowy forces moved beneath the surface and kept
realigning themselves in the midst of the
confusion which followed. In the French case, a
unifying figure eventually emerged, and he plunged
the country in a series of bloody regional wars.
While it would be absurd to imagine Egypt
emerging as anything on par with the role
Napoleonic France played in world history, some
limited parallels loom on the regional level.
Israel, for example, has been justifiably worried
about the long-term future of the peace treaty
between the two countries. Israeli generals are
careful to remind us that, as retold by a
Jerusalem Post reporter, "the Islamists regard
Israel as 'Waqf, holy land,' or property
bequeathed by Muslims for religious purposes". [2]
Even the short-term quiet between the two
neighbors is not guaranteed; last week, a rocket
launched from the Egyptian-controlled Sinai
Peninsula hit the Israeli resort town of Eilat.
Partly in response to this incident, and partly to
the growing chaos in the area, the Egyptian army
launched an operation there, but there seems to be
little hope for lasting success. [3] On Monday,
unknown assailants blew up for the 14th time since
the beginning of last year the gas pipeline from
Egypt into Israel and Jordan.
The
breakdown of order in the Sinai is a chilling
reminder of the threat the rest of Egypt faces if
the main power players fail to establish basic
political stability. Still, in Cairo, the haggling
continues.
In a recent report, US-based
intelligence analysis organization Stratfor
speculates that the nomination of Khairat
el-Shater, the main Muslim Brotherhood candidate
in the presidential race, came as a result of a
secret deal between the Brotherhood and the army.
Stratfor writes:
The MB and the SCAF publicly
quarreled for a week prior to that decision,
with the MB questioning the military's sincerity
in the political transition and the SCAF [The
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] sternly
reminding the MB of the risks of pushing its
demands too far. In that struggle, the MB
threatened to go back on its word and field a
presidential candidate, raising questions over
how far the military would go in trying to
contain the MB's political ambitions.
The tone then dramatically shifted. The
SCAF announced April 1 that it had dropped two
court convictions against el-Shater that cleared
him to run in the elections. Stratfor has
received indications that the negotiations
between the SCAF and the MB over el-Shater's
pardon took place over the course of the past
three weeks. In other words, while legitimate
distrust continues to exist between the SCAF and
the MB, the previous week's verbal sparring may
have contained an element of political theater
from both sides. … The problem the SCAF
faces is that none of the non-Islamist
contenders has a clear chance of winning the
election….
In viewing the options in the
Islamist camp, the SCAF would prefer to work
with an MB leader that is accustomed to doing
business with the military as opposed to a more
ideologically hardened liberal Islamist who is
intent on bringing the military under civilian
control.
Stratfor suggests - and
others, including this writer, have also argued
previously - that the military may be trying to
transfer all responsibility for the country's
governing to the Muslim Brotherhood, in part to
scapegoat it later for the economic collapse that
seems unavoidable. Still, there is plenty of room
for surprises in Egyptian politics.
In the
last moment, the Muslim Brotherhood also
registered a backup candidate, for fear that the
courts might reverse their decision to let
el-Shater run. Something similar happened earlier
to another prominent presidential candidate,
Ayman Nour (while a third candidate was
disqualified on the grounds that his mother had
dual American citizenship). [4]
On Friday,
days after el-Shater's bid was announced, General
Omar Suleiman, former president Mubarak's
intelligence chief (and vice-president in the last
days of the uprising), entered the race as well.
He denied that he was backed by the military, but
claimed that he sought to provide a counter-weight
to the Muslim Brotherhood. Though his running for
president is guaranteed to anger both the secular
opposition and the Muslim Brotherhood, Suleiman
seems to have a formidable support base; he
collected more than twice the required 30,000
signatures in less than a day.
More
broadly, it is important to note that the Muslim
Brotherhood and the army, though the largest, are
by far not the only power players on the Egyptian
political scene. The radical Islamists, the Copts
and the secular opposition come to mind, but there
plenty of other groups as well. Some are in the
spotlight, others are not.
Long fingers
from abroad become visible periodically in Egypt
(this also echoes to an extent the 1790s in
France). Though allegations that the American
administration orchestrated last year's uprising
seem grossly exaggerated, a recent report in Salon
casts further doubts on the American
non-governmental organizations which are at the
center of a high-profile Egyptian investigation.
[5] Similar allegations have come up since the
start of the protests.
Particularly in
Sinai and along the Suez Canal, Iranian meddling
has also been reported.
While the French
revolution has its limitations as a paradigm, one
lesson extracted by its scholars can safely be
applied to Egypt: out of the conflict of many
wills, a result often entails that nobody desires
(I paraphrase the words of a venerable history
professor).
Even if we reject that
paradigm altogether, we should consider a milder
and more recent example. Following the collapse of
the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s, many Eastern
European societies experienced the confusion,
economic deterioration, and prolonged political
instability which we are likely to witness in
Egypt, in a more extreme form, in the coming
years. In some of these countries, people speak
now of a lost generation on the way to democratic
transition - a generation whose hopes and
aspirations were continuously frustrated until its
members began to feel that their best years had
been wasted.
This is the optimistic
scenario. Somewhere between it and the Reign of
Terror, it seems, the future of Egypt lies.
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