Egypt elections look set to cement return to past

People sit at a coffee shop under an election banner at a village in Minya governorate, south of Cairo.

Reuters/Minya, EgyptHolding court behind a battered desk at his campaign office in the southern town of Minya, Bahaa Fikry embodies Egypt’s past. A provincial apparatchik in Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party before the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings swept them both from power, Fikry may well represent Egypt’s future too if he wins a seat in this month’s parliamentary elections. “The change happened and I said: ‘Welcome’. What I care about is that my children live better than us... but I found the country was going... to the precipice,” says Fikry. “The country needs us, or needs me personally, at this stage.” On paper, Egypt’s first parliament in three years should be a powerful one. It has the authority to impeach the president, interrogate the prime minister and withdraw its confidence in him. All laws must be approved by the elected house. But with the main opposition Muslim Brotherhood now banned and its leaders in jail alongside youth activists at the forefront of the 2011 revolt, the chamber is likely to be packed with supporters of general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, more interested in returning to business-as-usual than building a new democracy. Egypt has been without a parliament since June 2012 when a court dissolved the main chamber, reversing a major accomplishment of the uprising that ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule and ignited hopes of political and economic change. Sisi ousted elected president Mohamed Mursi of the Brotherhood the following year, after protests against his rule. He won the blessing of other opposition forces, based on an army road map that promised to put Egypt back on a democratic course. Sisi secured his presidency in a 2014 vote. Long-delayed parliamentary elections, now set to take place in two rounds on October 17-19 and November 22-23, are the final steps in a process critics say has followed the road map in the wrong direction. The new parliament will comprise 568 members - 448 elected on an individual basis and 120 through winner-takes-all lists. Fikry, who was secretary general of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in the southern province of Minya until the party was dissolved in 2011, is running for the first time. But 23 former NDP lawmakers are among the many campaigning across Minya’s nine constituencies. They stand to do well in an impoverished region where those with the cash and connections to help locals access health, education and other services have traditionally dominated. “These are not real elections and we have seen all kinds of people running, mostly former NDP people, mostly businesspeople trying to buy themselves a seat in the next parliament,” said Khaled Dawoud, who resigned as spokesman of the liberal Destour Party following an internal crisis. In the absence of the Brotherhood, now branded a terrorist organisation, the Nour Party offers the government the fig leaf of Islamist representation. It backed Mursi’s removal and has vowed to limit itself to “polite” opposition, losing credibility among many Islamists. Analysts say it will struggle to repeat its 2011-12 success, when it came second to the Brotherhood. Smaller liberal and socialist parties, including Destour, have been riven by infighting and have boycotted the vote or been thwarted by costly bureaucratic procedures, leaving just a few scattered critics in the running. As opposition lists collapsed, “For the Love of Egypt”, an alliance of loyalist groups, emerged as a leading force. Sameh Seif Elyazal, the ex-intelligence officer heading the alliance, says he will seek to form a bloc to lead the house. Despite the election posters festooning the streets and advertisements on the radio imploring people to vote, however, many people are not paying attention. Election fatigue has long since set in among Egyptians who have reaped few rewards from repeated trips to the ballot box since the heady days of 2011. During last year’s presidential ballot, voting was extended amid low turnout. One thing politicians of all stripes agree on is that turnout is unlikely to top 35%. “This is all nonsense. If I had a problem would any of these candidates fix it? No. I have never seen a member of parliament so much as stop a street fight. They are all failures and will do nothing for us,” says Mohamed Abdel Ghaffar, a young mechanic in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.