There is no hope for the man who for years was head of the old dictator’s secret services and who became Egypt’s vice president at the last moment. Omar Suleiman has been excluded from running by election rules that have also ruled out the Muslim Brotherhood’s choice, the billionaire Khateir al-Shater, the conservative Islamic Salafite candidate Abu Ismail and the liberal Ayman Nour, who went to prison in 2005 for daring to challenge Mubarak.
The man who will replace the deposed pharaoh will be chosen from amongst 12 remaining candidates in the running who will face each other on Wednesday and Thursday. Should none of them win an absolute majority, we will then have to wait until the end of June to see who Mubarak’s successor will be when the final round of voting will reveal the name of the new president. According to polls taken in the last few weeks, the first round should lead to a second round, with a more or less conservative Islamist and someone a little more liberal on various issues.
Even if the attention of the more secular is almost completely focused on Amr Moussa, a former foreign affairs minister under Mubarak, he is not the only candidate. Ahmed Shafiq, who led Mubarak’s last government, will take votes away from him. During the revolution, Shafiq was one of the men that demonstrators wanted removed, on more than one occasion, from the political scene. For this reason, according to activists, Shafiq, and to a lesser extent, Moussa, is a fulul, in other words a man who collaborated with the old regime.
Khaled Ali and Hamdeen Sabbahi are two outsiders of a completely different stripe who will collect votes from the hard core of the revolution; the artists and intellectuals. Born in 1972, Khaled Ali is a lawyer and activist who in the last 20 years has defended the rights of workers, peasants and students. He is the youngest candidate and will be supported by young people who hope the revolution will bear fruit, even if it will take time for this fruit to mature. Sabbahi, a Nasserite who has gone to prison on more than one occasion during his political career against the regime, will attract not only youth votes, but also workers who hold him in high regard for his social commitment and those who feel he is the only man capable of completing the revolution. All this notwithstanding, these men will not take too many votes from Moussa, whose popularity frightened Mubarak who, in order to slow his political rise inside Egypt, “promoted” him Secretary General of the Arab League. Moussa is different from the other candidates inasmuch he is appreciated by the lower classes, where he has the common touch, as well as in the international sphere, where he is known from the appointments he has held. Additionally, he is neither an enemy of the Islamists nor an opponent the military and for this reason he could negotiate with both.
A completely different profile emerges of the personality of the Islamist the polls show as having the greatest possibility of success. Abdel Monein Abu el Fothou, for years the Muslim Brotherhood’s voice of moderation and reform, has no longer been part of it when he decided to run for the presidency last June, thus forcing the Brotherhood to expel him. Appreciated by moderates who took part in the revolution and by the wealthier classes, Abu el Fothou describes himself as the candidate best able to represent moderate Islamists, more liberal voters as well as Salafites. The latter have decided to support him after their candidate was rejected. A critic of the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, Abu el Fothou has done everything he could to present himself as the unity candidate. In less well-off areas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s most faithful supporters will choose Mohammed Mursi, the party’s president who has become a focal point with the exit of El-Shater. Even if he is not charismatic or able to pull in many votes, Moursi can count on support from the movement’s base and the party’s organization, the solidity of which was confirmed by successes in November’s parliamentary elections.
Many Egyptians are still undecided just hours away from the start of voting. Even if many continue to see the elections as a contest between Islamists and the old regime’s “leftovers”, there are those who focus on economic issues and are undecided between candidates who belong to different groups. Even more undecided are those who have decided to support Ali or Sabbahi. “If they don’t make it to the second round, we will never vote for an Islamist or a fulul,” explained a Sabbahi supporter. An editorial of the online Tahrir newspaper says, “Indecision is truly great. Anything could happen in the next few hours.” “This is the price of democracy” writes a young reader, “We have never taken part in the nation’s political life and now we must train to play, choosing the right moves.”
Translated by Francesca Simmons