In Tahrir: Divided We Stand

There is a fierce battle raging in Egypt in connection with the approaching presidential elections.  Battles of this sort need flags, symbols and throaty screams amplified by microphones.  There are also signs, photos, music, and speeches in Arabic.  This is the way the millions who occupy Tahrir Square in Cairo are pursuing their dreams in post-Mubarak Egypt.

But the ghost of the Mubarak collapsed regime still haunts these diverse factions whose collective dream is to shape the future of Egypt.  With the Islamists garnering 70% of the seats in the new Egyptian Parliament, the only power zones left for contention are: the Constituent Assembly of 100 which has yet to take shape before it delves in to the formulation of the new constitution, and the election of a President.

Egypt is today divided over which direction to take: a State with an Islamic orientation, or a state with a secular orientation.  There are no model in the Arab/Muslim world to follow.  Because of the balance between its ideological/historical forces, the new Egypt can never emerge this summer as another Saudi Arabia (a Wahhabi policed-State).  Nor as another Turkey (a State whose secularity is guaranteed by the armed forces).  Nor as another Iran (an Ayatollahs theocracy).

The colors of the various flags in Tahrir reflect that noisy search for road signs in the most populous Arab State, Egypt of 90 million of 350 million Arabs.  The green flag represents the Muslim Brotherhood which controls 50% of the seats in the new Parliament; the black flag belongs to the Salafis, the Islamic movement which enjoys 20% of parliamentary seats who look to the Wahhabi failed governance model for guidance; and then the tri-color flag of Egypt, official Egypt, with the yellow eagle (the Quraish falcon) stamped on it to declare that Egypt is an Arab country –The Arab Republic of Egypt.

Missing from the parade of flags is a flag for Al-Azhar, the most moderating Islamic institution in the entire Muslim world of nearly 1.5 billion people, most of whom are non-Arabs.  Nor is there a flag with a cross on it, except that of the liberal Wafd party of Saad Zaghbol, Mustapha El-Nahaas, and Makram Obeid (a Copt) who had all passed away from the scene.  The Wafd flag which is still raised proudly at their beautiful building in Cairo shows a crescent hugging a cross –a great symbol of an Egypt made up of both Muslims and Coptics.

The ingathering by the millions in Tahrir and other equivalents all over Egypt, including Alexandria and Suez, took place last Friday.  They were all united by a fear that the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (the SCAF) whose head is General Tantawi, the de facto Head of State since the removal of Mubarak from power, would overstay its welcome beyond June 30, 2012.  “Yasqott Yasqott Hokm El-Askar!!” (Down Down with Military Rule!!) was their unifying chant.  Beyond that, their chants reflected the facts in Tahrir today: the Egyptian body politic is divided, fractured, polarized, and confused.  At least for the present.

What is all the divisions about?  A panel of Egyptian judges, called the Egyptian Election Commission dismissed the applications to run for president of three contenders.  These were Omar Soliman, former Intelligence chief under Mubarak, regarded as a symbol of that collapsed security regime; Khairat El-Shater, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a person who had served time in jail under Mubarak; and Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail, candidate of the Salafi movement, as a person whose mother was an American citizen and thus disallowed from that race by post-Mubarak enactments.

To the Tahrir masses, the motives for those disqualifications by the Election Commission were suspect.  The Commission is headed by Judge Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, the country’s highest.  He had enjoyed a meteoric rise in the judicial ladder under the Mubarak regime.  Prior to that, he had sat on the military and state security courts, a badge of dishonor in the perception of the new Egypt.  As a neutral agent, Judge Sultan’s problems were compounded by an allegation leveled against him by another senior judge, Zakaria Abdel-Aziz, a former president of the court of appeals.  He called Sultan “a big part” of the former regime.  Hence the suspicion that the SCAF was a co-maker of the decisions adopted by the Farouk Sultan’s Election Commission.

The divergence of views and suspicions were fueled by the fact that decisions adopted by the Sultan Commission were non-appealable.  Who closed the door to such appeals?  Article 28 of the Constitutional declaration promulgated by the SCAF after Mubarak’s departure, pending the formulation and approval of the new Egyptian Constitution.

Presidential candidates who ostensibly remain approved by the Election Commission number, as of now, between 10 to 13.  Leading that pack are: Amr Moussa, former Foreign Minister under Mubarak –a secularist; Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a liberal Islamist who had split from the Muslim Brotherhood and formed the Freedom and Justice Party; and Hamdeen Sabbahi, a secularist in the mold of the failed pan-Arabism of Gamal Abdel-Nasser who in 1952, led the coup that destroyed Egypt’s old traditional multi-party system.

This is the tip of the iceberg (though it hardly ever snows in Egypt, let alone forming icebergs!!).  There are 20 parties, movements and coalitions, not counting student, labor, professional, university syndical organizations, and artistic groups.

They all competing to be heard, struggling to be visible, and regularly competing for “OCCUPY TAHRIR SQUARE!!”