Egypt Elections: Between a Rock And a Hard Place
With only a few weeks left until the run-off elections, there are still many questions left unanswered. Barbara Slavin moderated a panel of leading experts on Egypt, co-sponsored by Al-Monitor, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to debate what a win for either of the two polarizing candidates would mean for Egypt Watch the full panel here.
With only a few weeks left until the run-off elections in Egypt, there are still many questions left unanswered. Where’s the constitution? What role will the military play in the new regime? Where does the US stand? Will there be more protests?
Barbara Slavin moderated a panel of leading experts on Egypt, co-sponsored by Al-Monitor, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Thursday to debate these questions and what they mean for Egypt.
Despite their varying views, all three panelists seemed to agree that the choice Egyptians are left with is, for the most part, one between the lesser of two evils. On the one hand, there is the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammad Morsi. On the other, former Mubarak player, Ahmad Shafiq. Samer Shehata, an Egypt scholar at Georgetown University, put his money on a win for Morsi, saying he could not imagine a Mubarak remnant taking power after the revolution. Michael Wahid Hanna, an analyst with the Century Foundation, appeared to lean toward Shafiq, after initially ducking the question. And Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at Carnegie, put the question to rest when she said, “It doesn’t matter who wins.”
Even if Morsi wins, she said, the bureaucracy that was in place under Mubarak is still intact. The judiciary has made all the most important political decisions since the revolution and will most likely continue to do so. “How do you decide something is unconstitutional when there is no constitution?” she asked, referring to the fact that a new constitution has yet to be drafted, leaving a vacuum for whoever takes office.
