[See Part 1 here and Part 2 here]
The way to critique the Wafd
In the end, this critique hides the deeper fact that parties like the Wafd have to participate in the elections because they are part of the ruling system. They have been playing the regime’s opposition image far too long to change now. The new elections situation is merely underscoring the old umbilical chord that always existed between them. Moreover, the fact that their general assemblies voted in favor of this scam proves that this problem pervades their entire structure. It’s not a problem of a corrupt leadership, as many used to argue before. The whole party has become too accustomed to its paper-only reality that it no longer knows how to think like institutions that represent people. After all, parties that don’t have real power on the ground don’t stand a chance in fair election; they must fear it even more than the regime does. Their interest fits so well with the regime’s because they evolved to play the role of the opposition in the regime’s ruling story.
The mystery that remains, however, is why the independent media refused to address the Wafd’s tango with the regime more systematically? For better or worse, our media never tires from analyzing the Brotherhood’s deals with the regime, which ultimately take away from them, not give them what is not theirs (see Part 1). Besides, “convincing” the brotherhood to accept these deals takes enormous violence and jail time. So, why is the media so obsessed about these deals and not about those of the opposition parties that mean to devour the Brotherhood’s share for the regime’s sake? Doesn’t it matter that from now on every act of violence, illegal detention, and forgery that takes place to rig the elections will cater not only for the regime’s interest, but also for the interests of these “opposition” parties? Why did those who believe in, or speak about, this scenario decide to ignore these ramifications?
I propose that they have not been very keen on calling what the Wafd is doing for what they think it to be because they expect the Brotherhood to pay most of its costs, and most “liberals” accept so. This comes out quite strongly in one of Hamdi Kandil’s recent articles (a prominent nationalist figure and ex-spokesman of NAC). Right after the Wafd elected Al-Badawi president, he wrote an article in which he tries to convince us that Al-Badawi is the most suited to lead the opposition in the coming phase. He bases this conclusion on comparing Al-Badawi to the Brotherhood’s General Guide and Elbaradei. Elbaradei simply doesn’t have what it takes, he tells us. Yet, the widespread support that he received supposedly proves that Egypt has real alternatives to Brotherhood, he adds, which for him is Elbaradei’s most important contribution to Egyptian politics. Clarey the fear of the Brotherhood’s ascendance moves people like him. But in the end he needs to give us some reasons to bet on Al-Badaw, which takes him to emphasize the usual: the man’s wealth and media power.
Likewise, Elbaradei would have died out had the Brotherhood not bolstered his protests and collected signatures for him. Yet, here we are with a prominent opposition figure using the achievements of the Brotherhood (a good 90% of Elbaradei’s phenomenon) to argue that it means the Brotherhood’s demise. Thus the twisted logic: read the Brotherhood’s achievements as signifying their demise (the whole NAC argues like so); then side with Wafd’s new hero as a way to oppose the regime without relying on the Brotherhood; then this hero plots with the regime to rid the parliament of the Brotherhood for the regime’s sake, in exchange for some seats; which can then reemphasize the idea that the Wafd is indeed the new alternative. In this way celebrating the Wafd against all that it is doing is actually a deluded liberal celebration of getting rid of the Brotherhood by very illiberal means. I say deluded because it doesn’t have any reality on the ground. Conversely, directly attacking the Wafd jeopardizes this goal, which they all happen to share with the regime, even if they passionately oppose this regime.
The people who hate the Brotherhood to the extent that they’d effectively side with the regime are many. They typically bring up a number of problems to justify this hate, some of which is true but none really justifies siding with Mubarak’s regime. A central element in this justification is the Brotherhood position on the Coptic minority, which excludes them from the nation. Granting, Coptophobia has spread so much in Egypt that the Brotherhood’s position is now hardly an exception. Like this you often see vehement Coptophobes evoking Coptophobia to justify siding with the regime.
In connection to this, The Wafd is taken to be the opposite of the Brotherhood on matters related to the Coptic minority. For many decades its slogan was “the crescent with the cross,” which it always printed on its pamphlets and banners. People thus look up to it in relation to the rising Coptophobia in Egypt, which has risen to very worrying levels recently. But Al-Badawi’s had a different thing mind, it seems. The first thing that he did since he became president of the Wafd was remove the “the crescent with the cross” slogan form all party publications. He also wouldn’t have it on the cars of the party’s convoy to Gaza, which alarmed the civil rights diehards of the party to the extent that it led Makram Ebeid to resign. In doing so, Al-Badawi seems to be swimming with rising right wing sentiments to safeguard his party’s popularity. But there is nothing surprising in that he does so; it’s the same type of opportunism that led the party to tango with the regime at the first place. What was very surprising, however, is that no one talked about that even though it led to the resignation of a prominent party member, especially given how Egypt is suffering from unprecedented Coptophobia and sectarian unrest. Even more surprising was the fact that Ebeid explained Al-Badawi’s decision to get rid of “the crescent with the cross” in terms of the party’s attempt to appease the Brotherhood, demanding that the party revisited its relationship with the Brotherhood. Coptophobe as it is, there is simply no way that the Brotherhood would have forced the Wafd to get rid of this slogan. They couldn’t care less what the Wafd does about it, in fact. More likely it was an opportunistic decision to adapt to a new political market (“liberals” love to do so everywhere). In any case, those who want to celebrate its supposed imminent victory on the Brotherhood now have one more reason to do so.
In the final part, most Egyptian analysts are “liberal,” and they therefore oppose religious political organizations like the Brotherhood. But only the regime brute force would be able to check the Brotherhood’s popular power. The Wafd thus provides these “liberal” analysts with a hypocritical proxy for this job: you side with the regime by not attacking the Wafd for what you think it is; you don’t even need to side with the Wafd itself; just attack it wrongly (opposite to what you think it’s doing); and the regime does the job for you. That is now “liberalism” the Egyptian way. The scenario went a bit wrong, however, because the legendary “liberal” hero mistimed his attack on the liberal left by sacking Issa from Al-Dostour too early. So now we started seeing more angry people calling the Wafd for what they think it is, be it they remain a minority of activists. At the same time the media very tellingly almost stopped talking about the Wafd for about two weeks already. Thus we got another strange liberal shift that no one needs to explain because everyone understands: after a month of obsessing about the Wafd, they all ditched it when the action really started and started obsessing about what really matters in this whole ordeal: the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s news now monopolises the whole media, because the Wafd’s news were ultimately but a convoluted, hypocritical story about the Brotherhood.
Performing the narrative
A few days ago I was going through news about the Brotherhood’s preparations for the elections when I came across a short piece featuring a number of telegraphic interviews with prominent Brotherhood members. It sadly quoted Mohamed El-Beltagy, a prominent Brotherhood MP, expressing his wish that the Wafd would "oppose rigging the election irrespective of who benefits from it, the regime or the Wafd itself." Beltagy was one of the brotherhood MPs who joined the Flotilla. He was also the one who organized the Gaza convoy that I discussed in Part 1. It was sad to see him call on the Wafd to observe a basic decency that it no longer understands. Perhaps he forgot how the regime had Badawi head a convoy to Gaza a week after confiscating his own Gaza cargo. No one stopped at this incident, of course; it no longer moves people to see an opposition leader calling on another, “please don’t rig the elections against me,” especially if the loser belongs to the Brotherhood.
But I cannot decide which is sadder, still: this appeal or the hyperbole behind it. For ultimately Beltagi’s appeal carries an implicit longing for the old rigging system, which exposes how equally convuluted the Brotherhood’s politics is. What Beltagy wants here is to go back to the form of rigging that assured his organization the biggest opposition block in the parliament even when it doesn’t desire to take-over political rule. The Brotherhood has no such desire not only because they lack the power to fulfill it now, but also because they fear falling into Hamas’ trap. Ruling Egypt now will force tough choices on them that risk ending their might. For instance, there is the question of what will they do with the Camp David treaty? It’s uncertain that they have the power, or will, to cancel it at the time when honoring it would just end them. Once in power they will have to rule on many of these risky issues, and as a result they decided to forget about seeking political rule until at least the regional situation changes, which is obviously not happening soon. Their framework for changing Egypt thus runs over whole decades (they’ve been around since 1929, and were very big throughout most of this history).
Like this a truly free elections would only end up getting them into a big mess, because it would beg them to win when they don’t want to. All they want for now is to stay the biggest opposition in the country until things change. That’s part of the reason why they never contest the elections with enough numbers to bring them majority seats (it’s not only to appease the regime as many people believe). The old rigging system thus serves them and the regime well, more sinisterly than people think. Then again, their supporters are surely not flocking around them just to wait decades until maybe they could do something about Egypt’s problems. They support them because they want to change Egypt now. In this way, while they stated that they fear the Hamas trap more than once before, and thus could claim to have been clear about their politics from the start, they still know well that they are leading-on their supporters and voters who project unto them much more than staying as is until big problems solve themselves on their own. That is to say, they operate with their own convoluted méconnaissance too.
Our méconnaissance story thus punctuates all political activities in Egypt now, affecting each player in his or her own convulted way. It was, for instance, only a couple of months ago when Rif’at Al-Sa’id (the president of the socialist Al-Tagamo’ party) bluntly accused the Wafd of conspiring with the regime to kick the Brotherhood out of the parliament. He was one of the very few people who did so, as said. But the same conspiracy narrative that holds the Wafd culprit also says that the regime will give Al-Tagamo’ part of the Brotherhood’s share too, be it much smaller than the Wafd’s. Honoring the same conspiracy, it seems, Al-Said came out yesterday to tell us (again bluntly) that “there is no doubt that Al-Tagmo’(his party) sides with the ruling party against the banned group (i.e. the Brotherhood).” And then he called on all “to join hands against them (the Brotherhood).” So what was the problem with the Wafd a month ago, then: that they’re getting a bigger share?
More twistedly, Al-Badawis’s TV station, Al-Hayat, has been airing a TV campaign for some time now to warn people to be careful when they donate their money to the Palestinian cause via the Relief Committee of the Arab Doctors’ Syndicate lest they use it for supporting terrorism. The relief agency that we are talking about here is the biggest Egyptian agency supporting Palestinian relief activities, especially in relation to Gaza relief. What’s more, it is controlled by the Brotherhood, and was thus repeatedly accused of supporting terror in “Gaza” (meaning Hamas) and even money laundering. So here we have the hero of the Gaza convoy (see above) attacking Gaza relief to attack the Brotherhood. This shows that in the end the Brotherhood is the Wafd’s main enemy, not the regime, to the extent that they would fall so low.
The Karama Party’s situation provides us with perhaps the most vivid of all our méconnaissance performances. Karama is a small party that is not involved in any of these plots against the Brotherhood; it’s also very present in all opposition politics on the ground. Theoretically speaking then, it has nothing to do with our narrative. But the fact remains that it found itself all of a sudden in a situation whereby anyone who participates in the elections would either win or lose by rigging, no matter how much he avoids dirty tricks or wins for real. The specter of this shame eventually pressured them to declare their intention to participate in the elections in the most banal way. Like the rest, they withheld announcing its position on the matter for months until others did it first. Then, when all parties decided to participate following the Wafd (see Part 1), Karama insisted that they will boycott but added that they need to explain the reasons behind doing so to their constituency (they have three seats). Hamdin Sabahi, the leader of the party, then held a big conference in his electoral area to explain his decision to “the masses,” which supposedly went frantic and insisted that he doesn’t leave them alone. In the end, Sabahi had to give into the demands of the people in the same way Nasir gave in to popular demands to return to office after he had resigned because of the 1967 defeat (Karama is Naserite). The party then circulated the videos of the masses calling on Hamdin not to boycott because they have no one else to depend on but him. Our conspiracy narrative thus forced this banality on one of the least involved parties in this dirty ordeal (perhaps because it is the least involved), for everyone knew what Hamdin was doing and how it would end from the moment they said “we want to boycott but we have explain why to the people.” It was really embarrassing to see them stage this poor soap opera to justify his participation.
Finally, the same story punctuates micro politics too. Let me illustrate this with one last Wafdist story. A month ago one of my friends was running an errand in the official state registry a (al-Shar Al-‘Aqari), where you register new apartments, formalize power of attorney, etc. She used the al-Shar Al-‘Aqari’s branch in Elgezeera Club to avoid the long queues of the normal branches (it’s open only to the members of this elite club). A few minutes after she had gone in, Samira Ahmad, a known actress and a Wafdist candidate, entered to register something of hers. Her application for the election was already front-page news all over Egypt. Trying to complement her, the civil servant who attended to her request smiled at her and expressed his concern that she’s getting herself into a very messy business (elections have always involved using thugs, bribery, etc). She smiled at him and told him not to worry about it as, “You know, these things (the elections) are all arranged.” That is to say, “I’m wining anyway without needing to get into an messes.”
Later on Ayman Nour, the leader of the Ghad party, came in to run some business of his own. He was an MP in the same area that she is running for several times before, and knows it well. He also ran against Mubarak for presidency, which got him 7 years in jail (he came out of prison only a few months back). Nour is boycotting the elections on the grounds that every bit of it is rigged already (for the reasons that we saw in part one). Seeing Ahmad, he greeted her and wished her well in the elections, then offered to help with her campaign in his area. More than anyone else he knows that this election is farcical that he supposedly refuses to play along, and more so in relation to someone like Ahmad who cannot win without rigning the elections in her favour. In the end we can conceptualise Ahmad’s al-Shar Al-‘Aqari storyline very roughly as follows:
Civil Servant: I hope the elections doesn’t get you trouble;
Ahmad: don’t worry it’s already fixed;
Nour: you need to moblize the people to win, I can help you with that;
Ahmad: thanks for this offer dear, it’s all about the people (but she’s probably thinking, “no way that will get me into trouble with the regime” because Nour is classified as a major trouble maker)
This happened spontaneously in a small public office in front of everyone to see. (Contrast this to how Al-Masry Al-Youm represents her campaign, here for example). It seems that the protagonist of this story lived with our méconnaissance long enough to speak it so spontaneously.
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In the final part, our twisted conspiracy narrative organizes election politics and representation throughout: from overarching discourse to micro political performances. That doesn’t mean that it has to happen, of course. It remains unclear if the state will indeed honour the conspiracy that I discussed in this essay. We don’t know which of the three scenarios they will opt for in the end: (1) leave some seats for free elections and rig the rest in favour of the ruling party, which means the Brotherhood wins most of the free ones (a la old rigging); (2) rig some seats in favour of the formal opposition parties to reduce the Brotherhood’s share in the parliament (our organizing narrative); (3) rig the great majority of it for the ruling party, which means getting rid of all opposition. I personally favour the last one, because it exposes a rigged election for what it is, and entails a big slap on the face of the whole opposition,which I think everyone of them deserves now that a rigging narrative have become their only resource, even if the Wafd deserves it most. Unfortunately, this scenario seems the least likely, as the regime is generally a bit smarter than to do so. My personal worst is the first scenario, however, which would allow the regime to legitimise a bout of bad politics and election institutions. But opting for it takes more intelligence than our security minded regime has, I hope.