The process that will elect members of Egypt’s two legislative chambers, the People’s Assembly and the Shura, began this week and will end on March 4, 2012.
These elections do not appear to be about making a change, regardless of their result, but simply an important, but not decisive step forward in the lengthy Egyptian transition process.
The main issue is the military’s role in Egypt’s future political arrangement, which will not be resolved by the elections. Egypt remains, at least until a new constitution is approved, a presidential and not a parliamentary republic and the new legislative bodies will not be able to choose a government, the third one so far, which is about to be appointed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). The new constitution remains burdened with a “constitutional declaration” with which the current military leadership would like to not only guarantee the state’s secular status, but also its own supremacy under the nation’s new constitutional laws.
Having said this, the election outcome, which will only be known in the spring, is important for two reasons.
Primarily, because it will give a greater idea, for the first time, of the relative weight of political parties. A greatly fragmented situation has developed, as frequently happens in the first elections after the fall of an authoritarian regime. There are about 50 parties taking part in these elections, most of them have joined together in four heterogeneous coalitions. Naturally, attention will focus on the results obtained by the Muslim Brotherhood, which will be important, how much weight followers of the former regime running under new party labels will carry and the strength of the progressive movements, who started the whole process with demonstrations on Tahrir Square starting on January 25.
The other important reason about the election results is that the winners should play an important role, according to the rules, in drawing up the new constitution. The rules, however, have not been clarified by the SCAF. It is likely that this will result in a showdown between the military and the winners of the parliamentary elections.
While waiting for the first election results, it is worth talking about the atmosphere in which they are taking place. On November 8, the Muslim Brotherhood organized a large demonstration in Tahrir Square to protest against the SCAF’s “constitutional declaration” that they see as a hindrance to their future freedom of action, as potential winners of the elections. However, they found themselves up against a powerful reaction, not by the army, but by the Interior Ministry’s Central Security Forces (CSF). They are a 300,000 strong, anti-riot force, very much tied to the old regime, whose brutal crackdown took more than 40 lives and injured hundreds more. It appeared to be yet another provocation aimed at derailing the election process that effectively remained in doubt until the very last minute. The effect of the CSF’s ferocious repressive action was that the Muslim Brotherhood brought together representatives of all parties, who, for a number of days, filled Tahrir Square, calling for a “Second Phase” of the revolution that, after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, called for the deposing of Field Marshal Tantawi and the SCAF. The government’s resignation and the mention of Kamal Ganzouri’s name as a possible new prime minister did not quiet the crowds, who demanded the creation of a government of national salvation, completely independent of military control. In the meantime the army reappeared in Tahrir Square and their units were used to separate the demonstrators from agents of the Central Security Forces.
At this point the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, fearful of a possible sine die postponement of the elections, which it consider an essential first step to accede to power, withdrew from the demonstrations, a move that allowed the SCAF to respect, albeit with difficulty, the first electoral round. But this decision by the Muslim Brotherhood was criticized as opportunistic, not only by opposition forces who remained in Tahrir Square, but also from within their organization, especially by many young members who chose to continue demonstrating.
The reader would be perfectly correct if he, or she, were under the impression that the situation is confusing.
Election rules put in place by the military authorities (see box) call for two-thirds of the seats being elected through a list system and one-third through single-seat candidates. According to more competent analysts, the system is advantageous, in the list system, for well-organized parties. They, and in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, are able to present their lists throughout the country. For those seats where single candidates are represented, people who are more deeply entrenched across the country, representatives of the previous regime are favoured (former governors and local administrators, businessmen, locally influential people). The path is more difficult for representatives of the numerous and smaller progressive parties; the Copts, women and minorities, ultimately disadvantaged by requirements to reserve half of all seats to “workers and farmers” as was the case during the Nasser period. The relative weight of various parties in voting terms will not necessarily be expressed in numbers of seats. But, on the eve of closing the polls after the first round of elections, it would be idle to hazard a conjecture.
Seeing that these are the limits of the exercise, it needs to be seen whether the electoral process, and this would be the first time in Egypt for many decades, has the necessary transparency requisites. The experience of the last elections under the Mubarak regime showed how the manner in which they are held, through successive geographic blocks, which allows results to be monitored in itinere, facilitates interference in the results. This can only be judged at the end of the long and elaborate electoral process.
One can only hope that the entire electoral process maintains a manageable level of legitimacy, formally and substantially, which is indispensible for progress of a transition that is long and complicated.
Translated by Francesca Simmons