Author: Jake Meth
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 4, 2011
URL: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-12-04/all-that-matters/30474295_1_liberals-mubarak-egypt-votes
Egypt's first post-Hosni Mubarak parliamentary
elections finally began this Monday, and they are not going well for liberals.
Islamists have taken a majority of the parliamentary seats in the first round
of voting, and though two rounds remain , liberals have little chance of closing
the gap.
This outcome, while of concern to many in
left-wing circles, should come as no surprise. Though liberals were largely
responsible for organizing and inspiring the January 25 revolution earlier
this year, Egypt remains, as it was the day Mubarak resigned, a deeply religious
and illiberal society.
Some liberal causes - notably among them the
fight against military trials of civilians and highlighting of police abuses
- are indeed popular with the Egyptian public. But the acceptance of these
causes has little to do with openness to liberal politics and everything to
do with the anti-authoritarian mindset that emerged on the streets during
the 18-day uprising against Mubarak. At that time, Egyptians hesitantly approached,
and eventually fully embraced, the belief that they no longer had to live
in fear of a repressive state, that the legitimacy of their government should
no longer be based in the blackclothed riot police attempting to push them
backward with their riot shields, clubs and tear gas, but rather in themselves.
Less ubiquitous was the belief that the fall
of Mubarak was only part of a larger fight for the liberal menu of demands
- among them the separation between religion and state, equal protection for
minorities and social justice. The rapidity of the events unfolding in Egypt
naturally left them open to interpretation, and liberals were quick to reiterate
their version of the revolution in an easily packaged form for the eager Western
media to devour. What soon emerged in the English-language press was a sanitized
and inaccurate version of who actually took to the streets earlier this year,
and why.
As one Muslim Brotherhood youth observed in
retrospect, "The liberals started the revolution, but then all of the
Egyptian people continued it." Liberal youths are far from making up
a majority of the Egyptian population, which meant that Islamists young and
old, Nasserists, far-left communists, and many others of varying political
tendencies were needed to push the anti-Mubarak protests to critical mass.
This fragmented coalition was held together only by its demand for Mubarak
to step down, and once that was achieved it dissipated.
With the military promising to shepherd Egypt's
transition to democracy, liberals quickly realized that free parliamentary
elections would inexorably yield a legislative body filled with members of
the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most popular and well-organized political
group. Viewing the electoral process as a lost cause, they decided to instead
focus their energy on operating outside of the democratic process to bring
about the state they desired.
By far liberals' most favored tactic has been
to hold massive popular demonstrations to agitate for reforms, which over-inflate
their actually tenuous base of support. Such was the case on November 18,
when a massive coalition of liberals and Islamists took to Cairo's Tahrir
Square to protest against the military government's attempt to entrench its
autonomy in the next constitution. A police assault following the demonstration
eventually set in motion nearly a week of violent clashes in the streets of
downtown Cairo and returned numbers to the square akin to those seen in January
and February.
The sight of a packed Tahrir was excitedly
interpreted in the international media as the sign of an impending 'second
revolution.' But the truth is that the protest was running on fumes all along,
its numbers only sustained by a familiar broad-based opposition to dictatorship
and brutal police practices. As the week wore on and most Islamists departed,
the numbers in the square thinned considerably.
Public attention has since shifted to elections.
The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and Salafi Al-Nour Party
have won the most and second-most amounts of seats respectively unsurprising
results considering Islamists' and liberals' divergent attitudes toward the
process. Islamists , who have waited decades for the opportunity to freely
run candidates, are dedicated to proving their widespread support. Over the
first two days of voting, Freedom and Justice members manned 'information
tables' and slept outside polling stations to ensure no votes were tampered
with. Liberals, on the other hand, have questioned the elections' legitimacy,
and many have opted to boycott the vote.
The election results confirm that the Egyptian
public has no desire to see liberals running the new government. This does
not mean liberals should give up; added time and resources may allow them
to eventually build a more robust and popular movement. But abandoning the
country's democratic process now, at its most crucial moment, will only undermine
liberals' commitment to the democracy for which they have so fiercely struggled.
The writer works with the English edition
of Egyptian independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm . His work also appears
in World Politics Review
