Egypt's Presidential Election: Round 2.

On May 23rd 2012 Egypt held it's first proper Presidential election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. As I reported at the time this was a free and fair election. However as no one candidate received more the 50% of the vote the top two candidates - Mohammed Morsy of the Freedom & Justice Party who received 24.78% of the vote and Ahmed Shafik and independent who received 26.33% of the vote will face-off against each other in a run-off vote that will be held on June 16th and 17th.

In the first round of the vote there was a very low voter turn out of 46.42% with only 23,672,236 of 50,996,746 registered voters taking part. This could be viewed as the Egyptian public losing faith in the democratic process but it is more likely to be due to confusion over the President's role. Under Mubarak the use of emergency law 162 meant that the President's power was absolute completely overriding the power of Parliament. The use of those emergency laws have now been revoked but the Egyptian constitution still needs to be re-written to define the President's power. It could become a very powerful position like the President of the United States of America who can veto decisions made by the houses of Congress or it could end up being a largely ceremonial role like the President of the Republic of Ireland or Israel. Egypt could even end up with the division of power that they have in France where the President deals with international issues like democracy and defence while the Prime Minister deals with internal issues such as policing and employment. However at the moment no-one knows what the Egyptian President's role will be making it very hard to decide which candidate has the qualities that best fit the job. So rather then losing faith with democracy most Egyptians simply chose not to vote because they didn't know what they were being asked to vote for.

The other surprise of the first round was the failure of any of the secular, revolutionary candidates to get into the run-off. This has fuelled fears that Egypt is about to launch into the sort of Sunni Muslim extremism they practise in places like Saudi Arabia. Again though I don't think this tells the full story because with 8 of the 13 those standing the overwhelming majority of candidates in the Presidential race represented secular or revolutionary values. Together they gained 32% of the vote meaning that if the secular vote had been united behind a single candidate that candidate would easily have beaten Mohammed Morsy into second place by some 2 million votes. If that candidate had also been able to pick up the votes cast for Ahmed Shafik who is technically a secularist they would have won outright with 55% of the vote. Therefore I think the real story of the first round of the Presidential vote was the deep and widespread support amongst Egyptian voters for secular candidates and secular values. They just need to gain the experience in democracy needed to allow them to translate that support into results.

As the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom & Justice Party have almost 80 years experience in contesting elections they were able to use that experience to unite their support behind a single candidate - Mohammed Morsy. Despite claims to the contrary before the election the Muslim Brotherhood also seem to have enjoyed the organised support of the even more extreme Sunni Islamist Salafists including the al-Nour Party who saw their share of the vote collapse from 27.8% in the Parliamentary vote to just 0.05% in the Presidential vote. This overt and clandestine co-operation between the Freedom & Justice and al-Nour Parties which includes attempts to form a formal, ruling coalition in Parliament has led to many observers, both in Egypt and internationally, to conclude that the Islamists intend to use the Presidential election to seize absolute power and make the Presidential run-off Egypt's last election.

This fear of an Islamist take-over coupled with pressure from the secular revolutionaries on the the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to step aside sooner rather then later has caused many Egyptians along with members of the police, rank and file members of the military and in a country with conscription many ex-members of the military to look on Ahmed Shafik as a safe pair of hands. The thinking being that Shafik's experience in high office along with his strong links to the military will allow Egypt's interim military rulers to step aside while still having the ear of the President who will counter-balance the power of the Islamist Parliament. Ideally I would have liked to have seen a revolutionary secularist President but the fact they were unable to win a place in the run-off indicates that Egypt's secular revolutionaries are not yet ready for power. Therefore the idea of uniting behind Shafik is a very sensible one and I think that every Egyptian should vote for him on June 16/17th. After all he is either Mubarak's last Prime Minister or the Prime Minister who finally convinced Mubarak to step down.

Whomever becomes President though I am still very opposed to the idea of Egypt's interim military rulers stepping aside so soon. This is because until Egypt's constitution is written and adopted the country will need an independent referee to settle disputes. For example if the Freedom & Justice and al-Nour Parties get together in Parliament to pass a law  requiring all women to wear a burka in public but the President says no without a constitution there is no way of telling who gets the final say. Also due to their long relationship training with and visiting the USA the officer class of Egypt's military have a very deep understanding of what is required of public institutions such as the office of the President, Parliament and the Judiciary/Courts in order to build a free and democratic society. While communication is clearly not their strong point Egypt's military have also displayed a deep knowledge of the type of reforms that are needed to get the nations economy back to stability and prosperity. Therefore it would be simply stupid for Egypt to throw out all this knowledge simply because the people delivering it wear military uniforms.

As an alternative while Egypt's revolution continues I would like to see Egypt operate a three tier power structure. That is to say that they have Parliament which comes up with it's own ideas and the office of the President that has to sign-off on Parliament's ideas and come up with ideas of it's own. Then above them in the background you have the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which offers advice to both Parliament and the President and rules on disputes between the two. Then once the constitution is written and adopted by a referendum Egypt should hold another General Election for both Parliament and President. This is likely to produce a very different result as Egyptians become more experienced in democracy. At this point the military will be able to step aside because the constitution will provide the Judiciary with the legal framework needed to rule on disputes between Parliament and the President. Also having a clearly defined legal framework should help many of these disputes arising in the first place.

So in summary I think Ahmed Shafik is the right choice for Egypt's next President.