“Only in Egypt” – some nonpareil happenings

From The World

This is my edited translation of Egyptian political analyst and talk show host Imad Adeeb’s column today for the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat:

Only in Egypt do politicians dispute final results of the presidential elections.

Only in Egypt are some elections results forged by bribing staff at the print house officially designated to produce the ballot papers. Sounds like the script for an American detective suspense movie.

Only in Egypt would you find in ballot boxes more ballot papers than the number of registered voters at the polling station.

Only in Egypt would one of the two candidates in the presidential race announce the election’s final results one-third of the way into the vote count and before the Supreme Presidential Elections Committee (SPEC) had the chance to examine appeals filed by the two campaigns and to officially declare the winner.

Only in Egypt would the vote-buying rate reach $250 per gullible would-be voter.

Only in Egypt would an elected president assume office without knowing his presidential prerogatives in a country lacking a constitution and a parliament.

Only in Egypt would state institutions change weekly and dramatically from one Thursday to the next. On the previous Thursday, the country lacked a president but had a parliament. This Thursday, it has no parliament and no president. Next week, it will have a president but no parliament.

Only in Egypt would the regular army, which proved professional in managing state affairs over the past 20 months, assume the state’s legislative and executive powers. It then handed legislative powers to an elected parliament before retaking the legislative powers after disbanding parliament. Later this month, the army would hand over executive powers to the president-elect but keep hold of the legislative powers pending the election of a new parliament.

Only in Egypt would you find one thing and its opposite. You would find a revolution and a coup d’état, the supremacy of the law and attempts to flout it, the rule of justice and its travesty, the Arab world’s most transparent elections and a struggle over its final results.

That’s fascinating and unparalleled, indeed.

Egypt Brothers' Mursi to face (?) in June runoff

Who will Mohamed Mursi (left) face in the June runoff?

With counting underway after two days of voting in Egypt’s first free and transparent presidential elections, Egyptian media superstar and talk show host Imad Adeeb is in no doubt: “None of the 13 candidates will win an outright majority.”

He expects a June 16-17 runoff between the top two candidates to pit the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi against one of four other frontrunners.

His likely challenger in the runoff will either be moderate Islamist Abdelmoneim Abulfotouh, or one of three liberals -- ex-premier Ahmed Shafiq, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa or leftist Hamdeen Sabahi.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s election campaign headquarters announced at a press conference the results they have so far show Mursi facing Shafiq in about three weeks’ time.

At this writing, results aggregated by Ahram Online in 15 different governorates show a total of 11,088,494 voters cast their ballots in these governorates as follows: 

Mursi                        2,696,652 (24.03 per cent)   

Sabahi                      2,581,190  (23.3 per cent)

Shafiq                      2,555,730 (23.03 per cent) 

Abulfotouh                2,012,019 (18.1 per cent) 

Moussa                    1,542,831 (11.2 per cent)

Official results are not due to be announced for days, but it looks likely voters will have a good idea of the top runner and his challenger by tomorrow, Saturday.

Adeeb, in his column for today’s edition of Saudi Asharq Alawsat, writes, “The question now is who will Mursi’s challenger be?

“So far, there are no clear indications. What we can say though is that the Coptic vote went to Shafiq. Women voters were divided between Mursi and Abulfotouh on the one hand and Shafiq and Moussa, on the other.

“It can also be said most businessmen voted for either Shafiq or Moussa. Merchants chose between Mursi and Shafiq. Youths were deeply split in choosing between Islamist and pro-revolution currents…

“As for the turnout, it will range between a minimum of 50 percent and a maximum of 60 percent.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mursi, who is 61 and seems certain to be in the June 16-17 runoff, received a scholarship from the University of Southern California for academic excellence in engineering in the early 1980s and earned a Masters Degree and PhD in rocket science in 1982.

His profile on Ahram Online shows he served as a professor at California State University in North Ridge between 1982 and 1985.

On completing his overseas academic endeavors, Mursi headed the engineering department at Zagazig University in Egypt between 1985 and 2010.

He was the official spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc from 2000 to 2005.

Muslim Brothers, Omar Suleiman & the year 2013

Egypt candidates for president (Photo from Ahramonline)

Gulf media tycoon Ahmed al-Jarallah today lays into the Muslim Brotherhood for risking turning Egypt into another Afghanistan.

Jarallah’s editorial in his Kuwaiti daily al-Seyassah coincides with an op-ed by Mohamed el-Menshawy for Egypt’s Shorouk News acclaiming the “Brotherhood’s successful storming of Washington.”

MENSHAWY

Menshawy says the overwhelming majority of people contacted by Shorouk thought the group’s first delegation visit to the U.S. last week was a triumph.

The four delegates – Abdelmawgoud al-Derdary, Hussein and Khaled al-Kazzaz, and Ms Sondos Asem (a 24-year-old graduate student at the American University in Cairo) – are all members of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).

The FJP representatives, according to Menshawy, were not only fluent in English and familiar with U.S. culture, “but they surpassed themselves” in wooing their interlocutors.

They held meetings at Georgetown University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment and the Brookings Institution, as well as with Pulitzer-prize-winning journalists and low-level White House, State Department and National Security Agency staff.

JARALLAH

Jarallah, however, is more impressed by three proven Egyptian “statesmen like Omar Suleiman, Amr Moussa and Ahmed Shafiq,” who have chosen to run for president next month’s in the hope of stopping Egypt’s slide from liberalism to extremism.

Suleiman was intelligence overlord during the Mubarak era, a position he held from 1993 to 2011.

Ahmed al-Jarallah

Moussa served as foreign minister from 1991 to 2001. He was then removed from his post by Mubarak and made Arab League secretary-general, a position he held until 2011.

A former commander of the Egyptian Air Force, diplomat and politician, Shafiq served for 33 days as prime minister in the final stretch of Mubarak’s rule.

One of them – hopefully Omar Suleiman, Jarallah suggests circuitously – can save Egypt from turning into “worse than Afghanistan now that pseudo-Islamist forces seek to monopolize power on the the strength if their dubious parliamentary majority.

“Egypt’s presidentials are certainly an internal affair… But Egypt is also the region’s barometer by virtue of its geographic, political and economic sway… We’ve seen already how Muslim Brotherhood offshoots exploited the group’s rise in Egypt to pounce on state institutions in Tunisia, Libya, Jordan and even Kuwait.”

The Brotherhood, Jarallah continues, “knows no conduit to its goals other than violence… It is now donning the cloak of pluralism and democracy in Egypt and other Arab countries in the hope of monopolizing power, not sharing it.”

ADEEB

Speaking of the May 23 elections in Egypt, leading Egyptian political analyst and the Middle East’s pioneer talk show host Emad Adeeb wrote yesterday in the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat: “The showdown between Omar Suleiman and the Muslim Brotherhood will be the culmination of a power struggle between the Military and a sweeping religious current.”

In his column today for the same newspaper, Adeeb intimates his expectations.

He writes:

“It’s time to meditate on the likely, but momentous, regime changes around the world.

“The likely causes for such changes are four:

1. “Some 58 presidential and legislative elections are on the cards between January and December this year. They could produce unexpected results or swings globally. The most important of these ballots will take place in the United States, France, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and some European Union, Asian and African countries.
2. “The sudden incapacitation of this or that ruler, but this is in the hands of the Almighty.
3. “Internal parliamentary or constitutional crises that could lead to a collapse of otherwise stable governments or political coalitions.
4. “Revolutions or military coups, most probably in the Arab world and Black Africa as happened recently in Mali.

“Experts dubbed 2012 as the year shaping a new world map. “Look to 2013,” they say. In 2013, Washington and Moscow will define their bilateral relations; Beijing will chart its economic outlook; France and Germany will sketch out their headship of unified Europe.

“The year 2013 is when the world will assess the Arab Spring’s untainted outcome and when (Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin) Netanyahu’s internal state of slumber and peace of mind will come to an end.

“The year 2013 will determine the exact course of Iran’s nuclear program -- whether the program is meant to be a potent weapon or a source of energy and an instrument of deterrence and political bargaining.

“The year 2013 will show who is ruling Egypt – the army by remote political control or the turbaned (Islamists).

“The year 2013 will be the world’s most precarious.”