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Elections
Election Day Violations Widespread But Relatively Minor
![[Egyptian voters argue with a solider as they wait cast ballots in Basateen a southern suburb of Cario, Egypt on May 23, 2012. Image by Pete Muller/AP Photo.]](/content_images/3/sm_AP_ElectionDayArgument.jpg "[Egyptian voters argue with a solider as they wait cast ballots in Basateen a southern suburb of Cario, Egypt on May 23, 2012. Image by Pete Muller/AP Photo.]")
On the first day of Egypt’s first post-Hosni Mubarak presidential election, violations of electoral laws and fair practices are occurring sporadically across the country. Some campaigns are violating the legally mandated period of campaigning silence, but thus far, no evidence of vote rigging and vote buying has been documented. During the parliamentary elections, violations of the campaign-silence period were widespread. Parties sent mass text messages encouraging people to vote for their candidates and Muslim Brotherhood volunteers were ubiquitous at polling stations around the country, handing out fliers while helping voters to find their assigned ...
Keep Reading »Can Egypt Have a President Without a Constitution?
![[A young woman cast her vote inside a polling station, in Old Cairo, May 23, 2012. Image by Fredrik Persson/AP Photo.]](/content_images/3/sm_AP120523114714-1.jpg "[A young woman cast her vote inside a polling station, in Old Cairo, May 23, 2012. Image by Fredrik Persson/AP Photo.]")
Everyone is awaiting the outcome of Egypt's first post-Mubarak presidential election with baited breath. For many, the election of a new president will restore the stability Egyptians have been longing for since Mubarak's ouster early last year. For others, a new president means the end of the military's involvement in politics. For others still, the victory of their favorite candidate will usher in a new age of freedom and social justice. All of this is wishful thinking, of course. Most Egyptians don’t seem worried by the fact that the new president will begin his tenure in the absence of a constitution determining his responsibilities and powers. It is hard to assess ...
Keep Reading »Interview with Egyptian Presidential Candidate Abdel Moneim Abul Fettouh
![[Abdel Moneim Abul Fetouh presidential ad poster]](/content_images/3/sm_AAF.jpg "[Abdel Moneim Abul Fetouh presidential ad poster]")
I interviewed Egyptian presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abul Fettouh. In three short parts below, Mr. Abul Fettouh discusses the most important aspects of his electoral platform, covering a variety of economic and political issues.
Keep Reading »Algeria's 10 May 2012 Elections: Preliminary Analysis
![[A voting station for the Algerian elections in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Image by Vikoula5/Wikimedia Commons]](/content_images/3/sm_800px-13_-_Elections_legislatives_algeriennes_de_2012.JPG "[A voting station for the Algerian elections in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Image by Vikoula5/Wikimedia Commons]")
The results of the 10 May 2012 Algerian legislative elections ran against conventional wisdom, and at least two points will certainly provoke much commentary. First, despite widespread disgruntlement, Algerian voter turnout proved to be significantly higher than predicted by most observers. 42.91 percent of registered Algerians participated – seven percent more than in 2007. Second, and possibly with region-wide ramifications, Algerian voters bucked a major trend of the so-called "Arab Spring": Islamist victory at the urns. Islamists won neither a majority nor did they come close to winning a plurality of seats in the new parliament. In fact, the five-party ...
Keep Reading »Egypt's Presidential Duel an Epic Moment (Video)
![[Egyptians huddled around screens to watch the first ever presidential debate in the country's history. Image from AFP]](/content_images/3/sm_Egypt-debate-via-AFP.jpg "[Egyptians huddled around screens to watch the first ever presidential debate in the country's history. Image from AFP]")
Millions of Egyptians were glued to their TV sets on Thursday evening, 10 May 2012, watching the first-ever televised debate between the two presidential candidates leading opinion polls in recent weeks. The live telecast—two weeks before the country’s first multi-candidate Presidential elections—was an opportunity for Egyptians to learn more about the two expected election front runners‘ visions for “the new Egypt” and hear their stances vis-a-vis issues like security and the relationship between religion and the state. More importantly, Egypt’s independent media broke significant new ground in Arab media election coverage by sponsoring the debut high level ...
Keep Reading »جدلية صعود أبو الفتوح وإمكانية استنساخ النموذج الأردوجاني
![[AP عبد المنعم أبو الفتوح المرشح للرئاسة في مصر. تصويرخليل حمرا. المصدر]](/content_images/3/sm_Mideast-Egypt_Horo-7-635x357.jpg "[AP عبد المنعم أبو الفتوح المرشح للرئاسة في مصر. تصويرخليل حمرا. المصدر]")
جاء الصعود السريع لحضور ودور أبو الفتوح في سباق الرئاسة المصرية ليعيد إلى الأذهان تجربة الصعود السياسي لأردوجان في تركيا في نهاية التسعينات وبداية القرن الحادي والعشرين. ولعل العودة إلى السنوات الخمس البارزة في تاريخ النظام السياسي التركي، خصوصا بين عامي 1997- 2002، تعين على فهم وتفسير عمليات وسياسات وسياقات صعود القيادات والحركات السياسية من خلال المقارنة بين أبو الفتوح وأردوجان وكشف جوانب التشابه والاختلاف بين النمطين والسياقين. ويلاحظ بداية أن تجربة خروج أبو الفتوح من عباءة الإخوان تشبه من أوجه عدة خروج أردوجان من حزب الرفاه وتحديه لقيادة الحركة الإسلامية التي كان يمثلها نجم الدين أربكان خصوصا بعد الصدام بين أربكان والمؤسسة العسكرية في عام 1997 الذي أدى إلى عزل ...
Keep Reading »Kuwait's Muslim Brotherhood
![[Kuwait's Islamist opposition celebrates election victory in February 2012. Image from Al-Akhbar English]](/content_images/3/sm_Kuwait_Elections_Islamists_alakhbareng.jpg "[Kuwait's Islamist opposition celebrates election victory in February 2012. Image from Al-Akhbar English]")
Islamist political movements have been sweeping the polls in post Arab uprisings that were sparked not by religious fervor and ideology, but by demands for democracy and freedom. Revolutionaries, who succeeded in toppling dictators such as those in Egypt and Tunisia, resent that Islamists who had little to do with their popular secular rebellions are now reaping the fruits of their efforts and being crowned as victors. More importantly, they are alarmed by the prospects of the formation of religious autocracies similar to those in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Islamist movements boast of better organizational skills and have for decades been in close contact with the poor, ...
Keep Reading »Epic or Farce: Preliminary Assessment of Iran's Parliamentary Elections (Part Two)
![[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and ‘Ali Khamenei. Photos by Sinaf, via Creative Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_iran_2012_new.jpg "[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and ‘Ali Khamenei. Photos by Sinaf, via Creative Commons.]")
[Read Part One here.] "Epic" Turnout After the 2 March polls closed, Khamenei said that the turnout had been “one of the highest” throughout the history of the Islamic Revolution. “These elections were a firm and clear answer” to the naysayers, he argued. Yet even without a thorough inspection of the results, it is quite difficult not to question claims about “one of the highest” turnouts in the past thirty-three years. Official figures suggested a sixty-four percent turnout, higher than the fifty-one percent in the 2008 parliamentary elections. This means that despite the unparalleled damage to the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy following the unrest of 2009 ...
Keep Reading »Meet the Head of Egypt's Presidential Election Commission
![[Building of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, in Cairo. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_supremeconstitutionalcourt.JPG "[Building of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, in Cairo. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]")
Egypt is gearing up for the final stages of a tumultuous transitional period under the rule of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) and preparing to enter a new phase following a scheduled handover of government authority to a newly-elected president at the end of June. The much-anticipated presidential vote is scheduled to be held on 23 and 24 May to elect Egypt's first president since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in a popular uprising one year ago. The man in charge of overseeing the poll is Farouk Sultan, the bespectacled, white-haired chair of the Supreme Constitutional Court and head of the presidential elections committee. Sultan was appointed by ...
Keep Reading »Prophetic Politics: Charting a Healthy Role for Religion in Public Life
Walter Brueggemann, The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipatory Word. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. Does God take sides in the elections? Is there a voters’ guide hiding in our holy books? Should we pray for electoral inspiration? Secular people tend to answer an emphatic “NO” to those questions, as do most progressive religious folk. Because religious fundamentalists so often present an easy-to-caricature version of faith-based politics—even to the point of implying that God would want us to vote for certain candidates—it is tempting to want to banish all talk of the divine from political life. But a blanket claim that “religion and politics ...
Keep Reading »Having a Conversation on Other Terms: Gender and the Politics of Representation in the New Moroccan Government
![[Women of the PJD; Image from Agence France Presse]](/content_images/3/sm_WomenofPJD-Small.jpg "[Women of the PJD; Image from Agence France Presse]")
The recent parliamentary elections in Morocco have led to the creation of the first ever elected Islamist government in Morocco’s history. After winning more than forty percent of the votes in the November 25th elections, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) led by Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane formed a coalition government with the socialist Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme (PPS), the nationalist Istiqlal party and the royalist Mouvement Populaire (MP). Benkirane’s first task as Prime Minister was to form the government by appointing ministers. After much speculation and many rumors in the press and social media, Benkirane finally introduced his cabinet on ...
Keep Reading »Democratic Elections: A (Post-)Colonial Telling
![[The front line of the Mohamed Mahmoud Street battles of Nov. 14-19. Image Source: Hossam el-Hamalawy, http://www.flickr.com/photos/elhamalawy/]](/content_images/3/sm_frontline-MM.jpg "[The front line of the Mohamed Mahmoud Street battles of Nov. 14-19. Image Source: Hossam el-Hamalawy, http://www.flickr.com/photos/elhamalawy/]")
Seoud Omar, a member of the Suez Canal Authority’s workers union, stood for parliamentary election as an independent candidate in Egypt’s port city of Suez. Just a week before the people of Suez went to vote in the second stage of elections on 14 and 15 December, the numbers assigned to each candidate on the ballot were suddenly changed. Many voters rely on these numbers to identify their preferred candidate in a long list of names on a confusing ballot paper. While Omar’s few election posters spread across town advertised his voter number as sixty-two, the number that appeared on the ballot next to his name was actually fifty-nine. The reason is that some other ...
Keep Reading »For Egypt's Voters, Revolution Feels Light Years Away
The first presidential election following a popular uprising celebrated for giving Egyptians their voice back is not as glorious and exciting as it was expected to be. Instead, it’s marked by fear and disappointment. Having learned throughout the last year and a half that there’s no room for dreamy revolutionary aspirations in the world of electoral politics, most people seem to be choosing their candidate out of fear of the alternatives rather than conviction in their choices. A few days ahead of ...
Keep Reading »لماذا سأقاطع الانتخابات الرئاسية؟
سأقاطع الانتخابات لأنها ستجري فى إطار خارطة طريق ملتبسة، تحت إشراف لجنة انتخابات مشكوك فى نزاهتها، لانتخاب رئيس صلاحياته مجهولة، برعاية حاكم عسكري سلطوي. رغم أن الكثيرين يدركون ذلك إلا أنهم يرفضون المقاطعة من منطلق أن المشاركة هي الخيار الواقعي فى ظل عدم وجود بدائل. فلقد جاء رد الكثيرين على المقال الداعي للمقاطعة الذى نشر بالشروق، يوم 23 أبريل، متمثلاً في سؤال: «ما هو البديل؟» السؤال غير منطقي، هذا إذا كنا نؤمن بأننا فى ثورة. إن كانت «الثورة مستمرة» فعلى مؤيديها ألا يقبلوا المشاركة فى انتخابات ...
Keep Reading »Egypt's Presidential Election: Meet the Contenders
Egypt’s first presidential election after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak is scheduled to take place on 23 and 24 May 2012, with a possible run-off race on 16 and 17 June 2012. The following guide to the presidential candidates is based on a series of articles published by Egypt Independent. For more information on prominent presidential candidates, click on any of the names below. Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh Khaled Ali Selim al-Awa Hesham al-Bastawisi Abul Ezz al-Hariry Mohamed Morsy Amr ...
Keep Reading »Algerian Elections - 10 May
While Algeria may not have seen protests on the scale of its regional neighbors, many Algerians are expressing their political dissent through abstention. On Twitter, the hashtag #10MaiToz was used to post various updates pertaining to police crackdowns on minor protests and voter fraud, with reports of registration under the names of dead people used to vote. Jadaliyya Maghreb Page co-editor, Robert Parks, in his piece "Arab Uprisings and the Algerian Elections: Ghosts from the ...
Keep Reading »Syrian Parliamentary Elections: Cynicism Wins The Day
Syria’s parliamentary elections are being met with cynicism on the streets of Damascus despite being billed as the first multi-party elections the country has seen in decades. Damascus – The streets of Damascus are covered with pictures of candidates running in the May 7 parliamentary elections. Alongside the images, there are political slogans that many say are out of date and no longer express a coherent agenda. The area east of Jisr al-Thawra near Martyr’s Square — or Marjeh, as Syrians prefer to ...
Keep Reading »نعم لمقاطعة الانتخابات الرئاسية
حتى تاريخ كتابة هذه السطور، نعد نحن المواطنون المصريون الذين ننوي مقاطعة الانتخابات الرئاسية الوشيكة أقلية. يتهمنا الكثيرون بالسلبية وأرى أن قرارنا هو عين الإيجابية بلا شك. بل إنني أرى أن من كانوا معنا على نفس الدرب ثم تركوه، من هتفوا معنا «لا انتخابات تحت حكم العسكر» فى يناير وفبراير، ثم تراجعوا وتنازلوا عن المبدأ، واستمر حكم العسكر، هم السلبيون باستسلامهم لوضع يتسم بالخلل. لطالما حلمت بأن تجري فى مصر انتخابات رئاسية يختار من خلالها الشعب رئيسه، لكن حلمي كان، ولا يزال، أكبر من مجرد مسرحية تتم فى إطار ...
Keep Reading »Arab Uprisings and the Algerian Elections: Ghosts from the Past?
In December 2010 and January 2011, Algerians and Tunisians took to the streets. While in Tunisia hundreds of thousands of citizens stood up to bully dictator Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali, to the West, cities across Algeria erupted into widespread rioting. Though the 29 December to 10 January riots were of an intensity not seen since the October 1988 uprising that put an end to the former single-party system of the National Liberation Front (FLN), they dissipated as suddenly as they began, with no ...
Keep Reading »Epic or Farce: Preliminary Assessment of Iran's Parliamentary Elections (Part One)
The 2nd of March marked Iran’s first nationwide elections since the widely disputed presidential race in June 2009 and its turbulent aftermath. They also hastened the decline of a “president” who owed his second term in office to a “miraculous hand,” a “hand” that, on 2 March, sought to curb Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s influence over the country’s affairs. The embattled head of the executive of branch, whose protégés have dominated Iranian politics for the past seven years, is slowly but surely coming to ...
Keep Reading »Post-Elections Egypt: Revolution or Pact?
For many people, it is compelling, if not intuitive, to think of Egypt’s parliamentary elections as a logical extension of what Egyptians started on 25 January 2011. Elections, the conventional reasoning goes, are a critical step in Egypt’s transition toward a democratic form of governance that is poised to replace the decades-old rule of former President Hosni Mubarak’s now-defunct National Democratic Party. Seen from the inside, however, this reasoning seems fairly detached from a much more complex ...
Keep Reading »Welcome to the New Egyptian ParliaMENt
This cartoon is a response to the astonishing fact that the number of women who won seats in the post-Mubarak Egyptian parliamentary elections is a mere eight. Indeed women do not exceed two percent of the total number of elected members. To be more precise, they constitute one and a half percent of the “Parliament of the Revolution.” What can a revolution against "dictatorship" amount to in reality and practice if men who have been dictating policy and social life norms, continue to do so? ...
Keep Reading »Egyptian Elections: Preliminary Results [UPDATED]
[This entry will be regularly updated. Last update: 6:50 pm, Monday, January 9, Egypt time] The table below summarizes the most recent seat breakdown by party/coalition after the completion of the first round of voting in the final stage of the election. Results do not include runoff races for stage #3 (scheduled for 10-11 January), as well as races that have not been settled due to pending legal challenges or scheduled re-votes (see the table’s accompanying notes for more ...
Keep Reading »The Tunisian South: Regionalism, Marginalization, and Unfulfilled Revolutionary Expectations
Approximately a year after the outbreak of Tunisia’s revolution, the proliferation of graffiti with slogans such as “Live free or die trying,” “Don’t give up,” and “Stand up for your rights” are poignant reminders of the struggle Tunisians embarked upon last December and January. Although Tunisians succeeded in ousting Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, most citizens’ expectations of improved livelihoods have yet to be fulfilled. This reality is most evident in the country’s south, where unemployment, poor social ...
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