The Votes That Will Really Count In Egypt’s Presidential Election
As Egyptians prepare for presidential elections, H.A. Hellyer writes that the question of who will win may depend on who gets the crucial backing of the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.
As Egypt and the world are just beginning to adapt to an Egyptian parliament dominated by Islamist parties, another election is about to commence. On May 23 and 24, Egyptians will go to the polls to elect a new president. For the first time in more than 30 years, that president will not be Hosni Mubarak. Since Mubarak’s forced resignation in February 2011, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has wielded executive control. The presidential elections will reveal the role and influence of both the military, including the SCAF, and Islamist parties, in post-Mubarak Egypt.
There are several questions which will inform how the contest is conducted and who will be the eventual victor. The first question is: do Egyptians actually want presidential elections now, or not? Judging from many Egyptian activists, one might assume, “no” – many of them lament the fact that Egyptians did not boycott, en masse, the parliamentary elections in December and January, which took place against a backdrop of substantial violence visited upon protestors in Cairo. A significant portion of activists on the non-Islamist portion of the political spectrum have insisted that a constitution is needed before parliamentary elections, let alone presidential ones. On the other hand, Gallup polls released in January indicate that most Egyptians do not want the presidential election to be delayed; 87% think it would be a bad thing for Egypt to delay presidential elections, only 9% indicated it would be a good thing. Moreover, 88% of Egyptians indicated that they expect the presidential election to be fair and honest, and 86% claim that they plan to vote in that election. They might be naïve about the nature of that presidential election, or not, but unless there’s a massive shift in the next couple of months, there will not be a boycott.
Fine. Who do they intend to vote for? Here, the picture becomes fuzzy indeed. The majority of Egyptians do not yet express a preference: 55% of them polled in December said, “I do not know” when asked who they’d vote for in an open-ended question. A few months before the first presidential election in a post-Mubarak Egypt, and Egyptians have yet to decide whom they intend to vote for.
At present, commentators and analysts alike are speculating on the probable strength of existing candidates. But the support bases for all of the known or presumed candidates are slim. Amr Moussa, the former secretary general of the Arab League, has the highest percentage thus far at only 17%. Everyone else – and yes, everyone else – trails behind, with percentages of 3% or less. That includes Mansour Hasan – who, despite getting the official endorsement of the Wafd party, has little grassroots support.
