The Cairo Buzz About the Future Prez

By the end of May 24, 2012, Egypt would have chosen, for the first time in its 10,000 years of recorded history, its future President.  That historic person could be one of thirteen personalities, each with an electoral symbol.  These symbols help guide the nearly 53 million electorate in making that unprecedented choice.  There are no elephants among the symbols (elephants inhabit the great Cairo Zoo), nor are there donkeys (in the Arab culture calling someone "a donkey" means "very stupid.")

The symbols for the front runners are "the horse," for Abdel-Moneim Aboul Fotouh (former member of the Muslim Brotherhood); "the sun," for Amr Moussa  (former foreign minister under Mubarak); "the scales," meaning justice, for Muhammed Morsi (candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood); and "the falcon," for Hamdain Sabbahi (secular Nasserite).  There is little doubt that as of July 1, 2012, the coup perpetrated by Nasser on July 23, 1952, would officially come to an end.

Like in every electoral campaign, electioneering is waged by rallies, debates, demonstrations, TV interviews, songs, jokes, and the flow of money.

The Cairo buzz has been focused on the televised debate between Aboul Fotouh (60 years old) and Moussa (75 years old); the former was jailed for a total of 6 years during the Mubarak regime, the latter served Mubarak and his regime in various capacities for many years.

Being the first such debates in the history of the Arab world, the whole region watched that lively spectacle.  Aboul Fotouh was attacked by Moussa for having been an Ikhwani (a member of the Muslim Brotherhood); Moussa was hit back for having voted for Mubarak's continuation in office in the fraudulent elections of 2010.  Aboul Fotouh retorted by saying "But I was expelled by the Brotherhood for my moderate stances," and Moussa tried to downplay the stigma of voting in support of a dictator by saying: "At that time, the choice was between Mubarak or a worse alternative -Mubarak's son Gamal."

In his 80 page political manifesto, Moussa presents his priorities as would-be President: end of the emergency laws which have lasted since 1954; elimination of illiteracy; acceleration of development; and the attraction of foreign investments.

Aboul Fotouh's focus is on "the average Egyptian citizen, whether Muslim or Christian (Copt); Islamic jurisprudence; rebuilding of a strong Egypt with strong armed forces; and increased funding for public education and public health."  The pillars of his platform (he is a Physician) are the safeguarding of the Revolution of January 25, 2011, and the observance of "whatever is good for society as a whole," including the right of a Copt or a woman to run in the future for the post of president of Egypt.

Throughout this presidential campaign which is fast heating, the political jokes are mobilized.  Dr. Muhammad Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood is called "the spare tyre."  The reason is that when the Brotherhood feared that its chosen candidate, Khairat El-Shater, might be disqualified (for serving a jail sentence of a long duration during the Mubarak regime, they nominated Morsi as an alternative.

Another candidate, General Ahmed Shafeeq, was called "the candy candidate."  He had promised to distribute lots of candy to the Tahrir Square demonstrators.  And Moussa who declared his candidacy in the midst of a dilapidated section of Cairo to show his determination to abolish poverty, was called "the cigar candidate."  Unfortunately for him, he was photographed in the midst of poverty smoking an expensive cigar.

From "the spare tyre," to "the candy candidate," to "the cigar candidate," to ten other candidates, the Cairo Buzz regarding the future Prez makes for a great reality show whose outcome shall define the outcome of the Arab Spring in this pivotal Arab country - Egypt.

A Heap of Brotherly Confusion

In Cairo, the underground (the Metro) runs perfectly well.  Clean, on time, cheap, non-congested.  At the Suez Canal, the southbound and the northbound, between Port Said on the Mediterranean (north) and Suez on the Gulf of Suez (south) runs as a Swiss watch.  If these events happen in Egypt as symbols of modernity and connectivity, why does not the revolutionary aftermath run similarly smoothly?

The answer lies in a beautiful quote from National Geographic in a recent incisive article headlined “Egypt in the Moment.”  It goes like this: “Before, there was no dialogue about the future.  Now there is one.”  Herein lies the brotherly confusion.  For the dialogue raised basic questions whose answers lie dormant in the minds of those who toppled Mubarak, as well as of those who rode the crest of the revolutionary success at no cost or at a little cost to themselves.  The former group fragmented; the latter group split in caucuses each claiming to be “the guardians of the revolution.”

Here we begin with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (the SCAF).  With no government in place on February 11, 2011, when Mubarak was pushed out of power, the SCAF assumed or was invited to assume power over demographically big and culturally diverse Egypt.  Field Marshall Tantawi, from his office at the Ministry of Defense in Abbasiyah, Cairo, became the de facto Head of State.  In effect, the SCAF protected the revolution at birth, then, as a unique midwife, took over the role of a stern mother.  Tantawi is the face of official Egypt and also its substance.

That role was truly beneficial.  It saved Egypt from the calamitous predicament of Syria where civil war is raging in spite of Kofi Annan’s understated descriptions.  It also provoked endless series of demonstrations in many Tahrir Squares all over Egypt.  While in Libya, where the country is bathed in competing city-state militias, Egypt is bathed in competing ideologies, Islamists and secular, and in all kinds of squabbles by professional syndicates and labor unions.  All of these forces are demanding instant political and economic solution and benefits.

How about the signal success of holding those fair Parliamentary elections in which a whopping 67% of the electorate, men and women, participated?  Here lies the SCAF’s boast of its good intentions of moving a complex Egypt toward the promised land of democracy and development.  To the anti-SCAF forces which want to force their way, in despite the structures of the provisional constitutional scheme promulgated under Mubarak, the SCAF says: we protected you from our guns; we shall leave on June 30 of this year; our role in protecting Egypt from chaos, after a civilian president is elected this May and a new constitution is drafted and approved in a plebiscite, must continue.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis (no coalition between the two is possible because the Salafis adhere to a literal and unworkable interpretation of the role of Sharia in governance) hold 70% of parliamentary seats.  But the weight of secularism in and out of Parliament is crushing the Brotherhood's old motto of “Islam is the Solution.”

The Islamists demand of an ouster of the Ganzouri Cabinet of technocrats has been rebuffed by the SCAF and by the secular parties and parliamentarians.  The Brotherhood’s initial selection of a would-be presidential candidate, Khairat El-Shater, and the Salafi’s selection for the same role of Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail were aborted under applicable legal rules.  El-Shater had served time in jail under Mubarak’s rule; Abu-Ismail’s mother was an American citizen, a disqualifier under the rules of that bygone era.  In fact, the SCAF bared its teeth by putting down a rowdy demonstration by the Salafis who besieged the Defense Ministry in Abbasiyah in a failed attempt to get their candidate un-disqualified.  The SCAF said: “How can an Egyptian attack his/her own Defense Ministry?  We are acting on the basis of court decisions, not on the basis of a desire to stay over beyond June 30, 2012.”  The majority of the populace seems to join the SCAF in support of this argument.

Within a few days from now, and definitely before the end of this May, a new President of Egypt will emerge in spite of the heap of brotherly confusion.  The three leading candidates are: Amr Mousa, a secularist; Abdel-Moneim Abu-ElFotouh, formerly one of the brain-trusts of the Muslim Brotherhood; Muhammad Morsi, now the formal candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood; and Hamdain Sabbahi, a Nasserite.

The role of the judiciary has been decisive.  Thirteen-thousand judges shall oversee the fairness of that fierce competition for the highest office in Egypt.  Fifty-two million Egyptians have the right to vote at twelve-thousand polling stations.  Campaign financing is limited to ten-million Egyptian pounds ($1.7 million approximately).  Under the leadership of Judge Farouk Sultan, who presides over the Supreme Commission for Presidential Elections, the presidential race is predicted to be fair.  It shall also be protected by massive security forces backed up by the SCAF.

By the end of June, the heap of brotherly confusion is expected to gradually evaporate.  It shall then be the time for the mighty River Nile to swell in its annual flood season.  Then the voice of the late Um Kalthoum, that departed great lady of the Arab song shall ring out again in praise of that mighty river in these words: 

“If it was not for the Nile, neither Egypt nor the Sudan would have found their place in human history.”

Egypt to the Salafis: "YOUR MOMMA!!"

When Mubarak was in power, he feared the counter power of the Muslim Brotherhood.  In response to this fear, he, prior to the January 25, 2011, followed the path of his original mentors, Nasser and Sadat.  Those military dictators who had shackled Egypt for 60 years had a recipe: fight the Islamists by other Islamists.  The Mubarak weapon was pre-ordained: fight the Brotherhood by an extremist Islamic movement called the Salafis.

The term “Salafi” in Arabic means “the return to the age of their co-religionist ancestors, the Islamists of the 7^th Century A.D.”  That return to the Islamic governance of nearly 1980 years ago is ideologically and practically flawed.  Islam of the age of the Prophet Muhammad and his four successors (Khalifas) was democratic (based on Shura-consultation).  It was based on women integration in decision-making and in other public life aspects.  It was also based on treating non-Muslims as equal in rights and obligations (“Lahom Ma Lana wa Alaihom Ma Alaine” – Arabic for: They have the same rights and obligations as us Muslims).  It was respectful of art and culture. 

How far removed are the present-day Salafis from this formula of what Islamic Law (Sharia) is all about?!  Very far to the point of being unrecognizable.  Long beards and long worry beads are characteristic of the Salafis in Egypt of today.  In their utterances and practices, they made Islam unrecognizable except for rituals.  But Islam is defined, not in the solitary context of rituals.  It is defined by the way you treat others, especially the others who happen to be non-Muslims.

The Mubarak Salafi creation, with its base in Alexandria, burst into the open only after the original revolutionaries, gathered by the millions in Tahrir Square and similar squares all over Egypt, got rid of Mubarak.  The Salafis felt that it was time to harvest the fruits from the trees of freedoms which they did not plant.

The result has been the establishment of a political party called “Al-Noor” (The Light) which gained 20% of seats in the new Parliament.  Those elections were fair and free, and the anti-Salafi forces accepted those results.  No problem.  Now emerges a problem for the Salafis who, in effect, look for guidance not within cosmopolitan Egypt.  They look for it from across the Red Sea – the wabbi police practices of the Arabian Peninsula which at times parallel the extreme Taliban ideology in Afghanistan.

The problem is that the Salafi leader, Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail, wishes to run for the highest post in Egypt in the forthcoming May elections.  He was disqualified by the Supreme Elections Commission under laws enacted during the Mubarak regime.  These enactments stipulated that an Egyptian presidential candidate must be an Egyptian citizen who neither he/she, nor his parents have ever carried a non-Egyptian passport.  Abu-Ismail’s Momma, who had passed away, was found to have been an American citizen who in fact had been registered to vote in US elections.  Trouble in paradise for Abu-Ismail and his Salafi movement!!

That disqualification was not the only one.  It parallels other disqualifications affecting other would-be candidates including Omar Soliman, the former spy-in-chief for Mubarak, and Khairat El-Shater of the Muslim Brotherhood for having served time in jail for political reasons.

Yet the Salafis would not let well enough alone.  Reared on the conspiracy theory, and trusting in their throaty numbers, they attempted to besiege the Defense Ministry, where the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (the SCAF) has its headquarters.  In very late April, in Cairo, the Salafis rumbled and their adversaries counter-rumbled.  The Salafis lost and Abu-Ismail’s hopes for the Egyptian presidency evaporated.

Who are the counter-Salafis?  Nearly everybody else, including the Muslim Brotherhood whose public stance is decidedly more moderate.  In this, the Brotherhood, especially the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), is joined by the General Union of Artistic Syndicates (Cinema, Drama and Music) which is assisting the FJP in the quest of Abdel-Monim Abu-Elfoteuh for the presidency.

These anti-Salafi forces have resorted to public demonstrations at the Headquarters of the Court of Cassassian (Naqd) in Cairo (where this blogger conducted hearings five years ago regarding compensation for the estates of the victims of the Egyptair crash of 1999).

Other anti-Salafi responses are taking place in Egypt’s public squares and in the secular media.  Among those direct and indirect responses are:

• Demonstration against Saudi authorities before the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Cairo for having arrested in Jedda an Egyptian activist, Lawyer Ahmed Al-Gizawi, for insulting Saudi Authorities while in Egypt; the Saudi Ambassador to Egypt was recalled by his Government;
• The present efforts to exclude the Egyptian Parliament from joining in the drafting of the new Egyptian Constitution;
• The formation by Dr. Muhammad El-Baradie, who during the Mubarak dictatorship was the first to call for constitutionalism and democracy, of a new party.  His party is devoted to constitutional protections with the predictable name of “The Constitution Party” (Al-Dostour Party);
• The defense of Al-Mufti of Egypt, the progressive Sheikh Dr. Aly Jomaa for his religious visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.  The defenders charge his attackers, especially the Salafi’s, of desiring to replace the enlightened Jomaa by a Salafi obscuranist; and
• Counter-attacking Abu-Ismail by alleging that he had lied about his credentials when applying to run for president by not revealing his mother's US citizenship.

In effect, the new Egypt is telling the Salafis: “YOUR MOMMA!!”