Last Thursday, a congregation of more than 150 politicians and activists held a press conference in a five-star hotel in downtown Cairo to announce the launch of the much-hyped “Egyptian Third Current.” The attendees included almost every major secular, liberal and leftist party or movement, a number of civil rights organizations, as well as the presidential campaigns of Hamdeen Sabahi and Khaled Ali. Even Mohamed ElBaradei’s “National Association for Change” and Al-Dostour party were there.

The purpose of the flashy gathering was to herald the commencement of a harsh and grueling undertaking: the establishment of a unified, progressive, civic-democratic political movement that would work to counterbalance Islamist political forces, the former ruling National Democratic Party factions and military institutions, and create what is at least a more balanced national political environment.

The call for such a political movement in Egypt is nothing new. One of its most recent iterations was the Egyptian Bloc alliance for the 2011 parliamentary elections, now significantly weakened compared to its initial grander aspirations, with the bloc’s three parties taking roughly only 9% of the vote.

Another concurrent, albeit much smaller, interesting experiment has been the Al-Adl party whose platform aimed towards an approach that was relatively progressive as well being calmer and less polarizing in its outreach. However, Al-Adl continued to remain a small organization, despite the substantial respect it garnered. Hopes for a strong progressive movement received a renewed breath of life when ElBaradei’s new “Al-Dostour” political party recently appeared on the scene, and raised the possibility of absorbing smaller counterparts into a larger whole.