Egypt: None of the front-runners represents the largely liberal & secular youth who drove uprising

[tabatha]

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's presidential race is boiling down to a contest between Hosni Mubarak's former foreign minister and two Islamists with strong bases of support after the election commission on Thursday released the final list of 13 candidates.

None of the front-runners represents the largely liberal and secular youth who drove the uprising that toppled Mubarak's autocratic regime 14 months ago, dimming their hopes that the winner will bring dramatic democratic change in the country. Instead, what has emerged as the key question in next month's vote to choose the first president after nearly 30 years of rule by Mubarak is whether the country of 85 million takes a turn toward religious rule or remains a mainly secular state.

Divisions among supporters of each camp have left the race highly unpredictable. Islamists showed their electoral power in parliamentary elections late last year in which the Muslim Brotherhood and members of the ultraconservative Salafi movement won around 70 percent of the legislature's seats. But in the presidential race, their backers are split between the Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, and a more moderate Islamist, Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh.

...

The liberal youth groups credited with Mubarak's stunning ouster are divided and weakened, victimized by a systematic campaign to discredit them by the generals, the Islamists and a powerful state and private propaganda machine that has sided with the military against everyone else. The closest thing to their own candidate is Khaled Ali, a rights lawyer who is little known to the public and likely to end up among the ranks of the also-rans.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-04-26/egypt-presidential-race/54560684/1?csp=34news

There will probably be a second revolution.

"FAILURE TO FIX EGYPT'S ECONOMY COULD LEAD TO SECOND REVOLUTION"

That's the conclusion of a new paper by Jane Kinnimont for Chatham House [PDF], which argues that too much of what politicians promise is vague and without basis, that the Muslim Brothers could find themselves soon at odds with labor movements, that the subsidy system now in place is both failing to address inequality and costing the government too much, and much more.

It's worth reading alongside this piece on the lingering confusion over when the IMF rescue package for Egypt will be approved by the government, and what string are attached, as well as whether the next government will be expected to carry the same kind of "austerity measures" we've seen in Greece over the last year (in my opinion, this would be a disaster) — and if not, how it will finance expenditures. In the meantime, a few days ago Saudi Arabia became the first country since last year not to wait for the IMF deal to start disbursing loans and grants to Egypt, for a total of about $1.5bn.

http://www.arabist.net/blog/2012/4/26/failure-to-fix-egypts-economy-could-lead-to-second-revolutio.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[Uncle Joe]

1. I only read part of it but I tend to agree with Kinnimont's analysis.

Thanks for the thread, tabatha.

[msongs]

2. liberal and secular in a nation dominated by an exclusionary religion...uh oh nt

[riderinthestorm]

3. There will be no second revolution in Egypt. Women tried to demonstrate in a show of force

and were brutally repressed after the initial "revolution" ended, during that period when they may have had the most leeway to be effective.

So too will be massive opposition by the state towards anyone else who seeks to overthrow the new Islamic state of Egypt. I fear we are seeing an Iran redux.

[emilyg]

4. Good post.