Egypt's Election Results.

Yesterday (21/1/12) the final results were published in Egypt's incredibly complicated election for it's 508 seat lower house of parliament (Al-Saab). At the moment the only thing that's clear is that no one party won the 255 seats required for an outright majority. However the two biggest blocs are the mildly Islamist Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) who won 234 seats and the more extreme Islamist (Salafist) Al-Nour Party who won 124 seats. This has prompted some concern that Egypt is about to lurch towards becoming an extreme Islamist state like Saudi Arabia. However I think these concerns are somewhat over done because although they are a religious party the FJP are far from extremists. For example their sister party in Algeria is currently leading the campaign to legalise abortion. There are also several significant, non-religious reasons that contributed to the FJP and Al-Nour's success;

Firstly they represent forbidden fruit. Under Mubarak both the Muslim Brotherhood and more extreme Salafist groups were outlawed and the state tried to limit the influence of all religious groups by restricting their activities. So once Mubarak fell and the Egyptian people had won their freedom the first thing that many of them wanted to do was the thing that they'd been banned from doing for so long. You saw this with Christians who proudly paraded their faith through the streets, the protesters who kept on protesting and the hooligans who wouldn't stop rioting. As Egypt is a majority Muslim country many people decided to celebrate their freedom by showing their devotion to Islam. No doubt that shine will wear off as Egyptian politics calms down into more everyday issues such who can provide jobs and who can provide a police force that allows people to feel safe their own homes.

Secondly there was the revolution itself. The Egyptian revolution was a beautiful thing to behold with no leaders or single group responsible. Instead there was just millions of ordinary people all doing their bit and together creating something greater then the sum of it's parts. However when things started getting really nasty in Tahrir Square with rocks, swords, petrol bombs and people getting killed it was the Muslim Brotherhood more then any other group who stood there and took it day after day. So while the Muslim Brotherhood could not have brought about the Egyptian revolution on their own the Egyptian revolution simply could not have happened without them. Therefore they were - I would say rightly - rewarded for that at the ballot box.

Thirdly there was the issue of experience. Under Mubarak everyone knew the elections were rigged so no-one really bothered with them. The Muslim Brotherhood were the exception to that rule consistently contesting elections even when they had to disguise their candidates as independents too do so. As a result they've built up a mass of experience in fighting elections that Egypt's other political parties simply lack. This imbalance will ease as more elections are held and Egypt's 20 plus secular parties streamline into 4 or 5 parties and stop cancelling each other out. In the short term it would have helped if nations from the democratic world had allowed their experienced political campaigners to act as sort of hired guns advising specific parties on their campaigns. Instead they sent NGO's to provide general advice to everyone. Unfortunately as the November violence showed some of those NGO's were more intent on causing problems then providing solutions forcing Egypt's military council to crack down on all the NGO's.

There is now the question of what happens next? Conventional political wisdom suggests that the FJP will form a formal coalition with a party like the liberal Al-Wafd Party or the secular Egyptian Bloc Coalition in order to gain the majority needed to force it's legislation through parliament. However Egypt's current political situation is far from conventional because they've still got to write the nation's constitution. Therefore I think that it would be better for all of the parties to remain independent of each other and only decide to vote together on an issue by issue basis.

As Egypt has the military council to take care of the day to day running of the country it's parliament has the luxury of taking as long as it needs to shape the sort of country they want to have in the next 20, 50 or 100 years. For example the United States - which is probably the model to follow - spent the best part of four years writing up their Constitution and over 200 years making amendments to it.