This article was posted to my blog over the weekend, prior to the second round of voting. As indicated in my Middle East Week in Review post, the second round took place on Sunday amid a major crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Early indications are that this crackdown has had the result intended by the regime. A more detailed analysis is to follow when the results of the second round are clear.

The first stage of Egypt’s three-stage elections, including both the initial round and the run-off, has left three basic results clear: the ruling National Democratic Party is showing signs of internal strain, the banned Muslim Brotherhood is very strong, and the legal opposition parties are quite weak. There are two more rounds, and the precise significance of the results are clouded by the fact that part of the struggle was taking place within the ruling party, where smoke and mirrors are usually the modus vivendi. Matters are further clouded by the fact that the banned Brotherhood may be contesting less than one-fourth of the 444 seats, and by the fact that they have to run candidates as sympathetic independents rather than under their own banner. The final stage, according to Al-Hayat, is in December. Yet the main trends are pretty clear.

(This first round has been incredibly underreported in the English media, so most sources relied on here are from the Arab media. For a source in English, see ABC’s report, Islamists Show Strength in Egyptian Elections. To the extent to which numbers cited in this post conflict with that report, it is because I am relying on reports from Al-Hayat and Al-Quds which are mutually consistent. I performed searches on Reuters and the Wall Street Journal and as of now neither have found the election worthy of reporting.)

The success or failure of opposition parties in this election is primarily important not because of what they might achieve legislatively, which on their own is nothing, but because of a new rule that a party must get 65 seats in the parliament to have the right to run a candidate in the next presidential election. Based on results available now, none of the secular opposition parties will be able to run a presidential candidate next time, since all together they appear to have achieved only eight seats. The Muslim Brotherhood has, based on estimates, a solid chance of having 65 or more seats, but of course it would not be able to run a candidate under its own name, since it is illegal.

An Islamist Triumph?
The initial round left the Brotherhood with an estimated 34 seats, while the ruling National party secured only 68 (they usually expect complete dominance), and while all estimates are that they will again very likely have a majority, they may have to rely on some independents aligning with them. Al-Quds al-Arabi, which is pro-Islamist, had this to say about the results:

…It is considered that that ruling party has suffered an important setback in this stage… while observers saw that the Muslim Brotherhood victory came about because of 30 years of efforts by the regime to marginalize the secular opposition. Demonstrators erupted yesterday at the ruling party’s headquarters at the Ambaba Circle in Cairo at the point of the announcement… The deputy chairman of the Ahram’s Center of Political and Strategic Studies Muhammad al-Sayid Said that the at the end of the third round the Brotherhood would hold more than 80 seats. He also said that it was a big victory for the Brotherhood and that the reason for it was that the president (Hosni Mubarak) had suffered a loss of confidence in his leadership, having allowed corruption to run free and having ended political life for a long period of time.

The fact that an expert working at a government-funded think tank could make a statement of this sort is itself a statement about how things are changing in Egypt.

A War Within the Ruling Party?
Al-Hayat headlined the Brotherhood’s early success, but focused on problems within the ruling party. Its report noted that there was apparently a stronger rift than expected between the “reformist generation” and the “old guard” to the point that one prominent member was defeated due to the “old guard” supporting an opponent. The article mentions Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son, as being one of the reformers, and that is certainly how he has positioned himself within the party, although someone not the son of the Pharaoh would be more credible in that role.

Another point Al-Hayat emphasized was that the National party made a clear error in refusing to formally align itself with any other party; this would have meant pledging support for the allied party in one district and in return receiving support in another. The article noted that some members of the ruling party had serreptitiously reached such agreements, including with some members of the Brotherhood, and had benefited thereby. The article also noted that the eight seats captured by the secular opposition were divided between six different parties.

The Oppression of the Copts
The Copts of Egypt constitute the Arab world’s largest Christian minority (in absolute, not relative, terms), and while they have been the most resistant to the pressures of migration and conversion, they have been under increasingly intense threat of violence and repression in recent years. And the repression goes all the way to the top. As Saad Eddin Ibrihim wrote in this past Friday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

…In an earlier era, during the three decades following the end of the First World War — often referred to as the Arab liberal age — Christians worked side by side with Muslims in opposition to British occupation and did, in fact, enjoy rights of citizenship that came close to that of their Muslim counterparts. They had long made important contributions in all aspects of Egyptian life — political, economic, social and cultural. Copts were appointed governors, ministers of foreign affairs, even prime ministers.

It was, however, the dawn of authoritarianism that ended this trend. Since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 coup, Copts have been largely excluded from the top echelons of political and administrative bodies. Only one Christian has since been appointed provincial governor, and that was for a brief period of two years in the remote governorate of North Sinai. Not one has since held a key cabinet portfolio; not one has even been appointed mayor of a city or town. Currently, Copts are sorely underrepresented in parliament, occupying only seven of 454 seats. They are also underrepresented in academia, especially state universities; despite the vast numbers of qualified and respected Coptic scholars, not one has been appointed rector of a university or dean of a college.

These examples and the periodic flare-ups of sectarian violence directed at Copts are symptomatic of the vast discrimination which they endure, as well as the general acceptance among the majority of the population that in a “Muslim state,” some are more equal than others. The litany of offenses is constantly raised in the reports of international human rights organizations, the U.S. Congressional “Report on Religious Freedoms,” and by the U.N. Rapporteur on Human Rights.

But nothing is as symbolic as the persistence of the Hamayonic Decree, which requires no less than a presidential permit for the building, renovation — or even the minor repair — of churches. Of course, no such restrictions exist on the building of mosques. This decree, the remnants of an Ottoman law and the most oppressive of any discriminatory law, is expressly intended to restrict the ability of Copts to practice their faith. It is a monument to the Copts’ lowly status in Egyptian society…

This will only get worse as the Brotherhood grows stronger.

The Final Analysis
These results cannot but be troubling for those who have hoped that a democratic revolution, or at least a democratic evolution, might help solve the region’s many problems by allowing people to resolve their differences in a non-violent manner, and by giving Arab citizens a stake in a legitimate order which has a place in the world. This process has indeed begun in Iraq and Lebanon, and it may elsewhere, but events so far bode a dark omen for the future of Egypt. Decades of repression by a party founded around statism when Marxism was in its heyday back in the 1950s have left the Islamist underground as the only real alternative. Despite being banned all these years, the Brotherhood is organized, energized and well-poised to take advantage of the winds of change blowing through the Arab world.

Kirk H. Sowell, Arab World Analysis.com