Posted By David Kenner
Friday, May 18, 2012 - 12:37 PM
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It's hard to be an Egyptian revolutionary these days. You gave your
blood and sweat to overthrow Hosni Mubarak last year -- but now one year
later,
some of the most senior officials from the
ancien
regime are leading the pack to replace him. It's a trend that appears to
only be accelerating:
Multiple polls
this week showed Ahmed Shafiq and Amr Moussa -- Mubarak's former prime minister
and foreign minister, respectively -- as leading the pack in the May 23-24
elections.
Shafiq and Moussa have long been dismissed by protesters as
felool ("remnants") -- officials fatally
compromised by their association with the old regime. The word's very
connotation suggests that they will eventually be swept away in the new order --
but judging by their showing in the upcoming elections, rumors of their
political demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Shafiq's pitch to voters is simple: Only he has the experience necessary
to restore Egypt to stability and prosperity. "He has material,
tangible results. You can feel them, you can
see them. He's not talking what he could have done," Shafiq spokesman
Karim Salem said of the former minister of civil aviation.
"When you land in Cairo airport, or any airport in Egypt, you can feel
the
difference."
Sure, you might ask, but is it really compelling to tout
one's experience in a regime that was, after all, overthrown by the Egyptian
people? To hear Salem tell it, Shafiq's role was largely bureaucratic.
"[Shafiq] was a core professional. He would take whatever assignment, do it,
and succeed with it," he said. "You can't say from an absolute perspective that
everything [under the previous regime] was corrupt, everything was bad -- there
were good things too."
Not everyone is buying that line, of course. From a small
office off Tahrir Square, Khaled Ali, the self-styled candidate of Egypt's
revolutionary youth, dismisses the experience of his rivals. "Well, I don't have a
background of suppression and killing the revolutionaries," said the
40-year old lawyer. "I don't have background of silence and submitting under
dictatorial rule. [We will see] if the people want to have this background for
their candidate."
But Ali is stuck in the low single-digits in most polls, at the
bottom of the pack. His plight is symptomatic of the larger weaknesses of
Egypt's left, which has found itself squeezed out of power by the old guard and
Islamist candidates. Ali pointed to the seven seats won by the leftist
"Revolution Continues" alliance and the roughly two dozen seats won by Egypt's
Social Democratic Party in the recent parliamentary election to make the case
that the left hasn't been left completely out in the cold. But even given a
generous tally of leftists in Parliament, they appear to make up less than 10
percent of the 498-seat body.
That leaves Egypt in a very dangerous place. Politics in
Cairo has moved toward the ballot box in recent months, but there is
still a
core of Egyptians who find legitimacy in the streets and will protest
en masse should they believe their revolution is being stolen from them.
And if they find themselves faced with a choice between
former Mubarak officials such as Amr Moussa and Ahmed Shafiq, they will
do just that
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/18/revenge_of_the_felool
