Moving to the Left

The liberal/secular vote, split in the first presidential round between two candidates with about 20% each, from here looks now to be the largest bloc of uncommitted voters in Egypt. One can’t say simply they are the largest bloc of voters, for that would mean they should have outpolled the Brotherhood for control of parliament. Neither can one say whether some of them will sit out the election either, even though that would resemble left adventurism.

Yet, had these parties settled on a single candidate, that candidate would be running against Morsi, rather than the counter-revolutionary Shafiq. It’s a typical failing of liberal revolutionists – allowing relatively minor differences of policy to create a split, rather than pursuing a sounder, unified political and electoral strategy. I am thinking of the German parliament after the 1848.

As it is, their opportunities are not entirely lost, as both remaining candidates are moving to the left in order to gain adherents in their bloc. For Morsi, this means less Sharia, more civil liberty. For Shafiq, it means dissembling, as he can have no real intention other than to govern in behalf of the big bourgeoisie.

Meanwhile the courts continue to display their alignment with counter-revolutionary elements. Acquitting the police, letting Mubarak and his family – just barely – live, failing to punish the despoliation of Egypt by Mubarak’s big bourgeois friends: this just energizes the revolution. A revolution with energy is not likely to be defeated if allowed to go to the polls.

Then what? Even the Western journalists are beginning to see how difficult it will be for Morsi to govern. And without a new constitution, the revolution itself will not have been won.

The vision of the Arab Spring perhaps out shines this reality – but that’s what visions do, don’t they? It’s harder to envision the courts taking Shafiq off the ballot than it is to envision people in the Square agitating against a ballot with his name on it. But if the courts did, and the name weren’t, the whole election would take a giant step leftward.

The People of Egypt Cast Their Votes

[Draft completed May 24, but I did not post it because I thought it might take a few days to count the votes. Posted now without further comment.]

I could wait until after the votes are counted and post on the results, but since this is speculative philosophy…. Anyway, a lot of anecdotal evidence is ready to hand. A few things it suggests follow.

·    Many of the Brotherhood’s voters are poor, and some are voting specifically economic interests. Overall this is favorable to the revolution. The fact that a few of them think Allah will provide jobs just illustrates the contradiction analyzed in an earlier post.

·    Just guessing, but about half the Brotherhood’s voters among the poor are women. So have no fear they would ever curtail the political liberties of women. What party would ever disenfranchise its own political base?

·    Given the choice of candidates, the vote can be expected to reveal splits in the Brotherhood bloc. This gives the liberal/secular parties an opportunity to gain concessions, possibly in matters of civil liberty and religious law. There’s still a constitution to be written.

·    It’s unclear how the individual elected through this process will govern. There is no new constitution, nor a proposal that can be put to a vote, nor even it appears a process for drafting one anymore – this latter thanks in part to the interference of the courts. So the revolution is incomplete, and the election of a president, even a revolutionary one, will do comparatively little in itself to complete it.

·    If you want to complete the revolution, you also have to reduce the military to obedience to the revolution via a constitution. Certain candidates won’t do this. Others might, but I can’t say from here whether any of them are on the record in this sense. The military’s claim to a special role or status under the constitution has an historical basis, but that is one of the things the revolution was made against. Without a constitution, this battle will be the president’s to fight – or not.

·    And so it’s easy to see that the people of Egypt have a choice between a president who will personally fight the courts and military, and one who will not. In other words, a choice between revolution and counter-revolution. I continue to maintain the Brotherhood is a sound revolutionary party on these points, a little Islamic law more or less not to the contrary.

·    Yes, they have a party plank for making Islamic law one of the principles of the constitution. This causes a great deal of hand-wringing among Western journalists. But their wishes are not under consideration.

All this presupposes a result in which the Brotherhood have not split so much they cannot elect their candidate in the next round. You can’t rule out a run-off between the leading liberal/secular candidate and a Brotherhood candidate either until they count the votes in the current round. One can say the revolution will roundly defeat any of the candidates from the former regime in the run-off, or it will look and feel like fraud – whatever Mr. Carter happens to observe – and the revolution will have to start over from Square one.