By Khalil Al-Anani
CAIRO: The sole outcome of the recent Egyptian parliamentary elections is a powerless assembly. With no surprise in the sweeping victory of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), the elections revealed its hideous face.
For the sake of the analysis, one has to evoke the shadow of 2005 elections to grasp what happened in 2010 elections. Needles to say, the unprecedented victory of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in 2005 elections was provocative for the Egyptian regime which was keen to diminish the social and political capital of the MB. Thus, the competition between the NDP and MB in 2010 elections was not for acquiring seats, which as predicted are granted for NDP candidates, but rather over the political image and symbolic meanings of the contest.
During the course of the past five years, the NDP was keen to eradicate the political presence of the MB. Not surprisingly, the group couldn’t attain any political gains whether in the Shoura Council (the high house) in 2007 and 2010 and boycotted the municipal elections in 2008. Despite these facts, the movement failed to pick up the message correctly and the result was a shocking loss in the last elections.
Regardless of the furor over the elections procedures, which is by no means unusual, the message was clear; no more politics for the MB. The NDP has not only won the elections but also, and more significantly, wiped out the MB. The difference in meaning is important. The aim of the NDP in these elections was not to defeat the MB, which can be achieved easily, but mainly to discredit its popularity. Thus, the NDP mobilized against the MB by waving the scarecrow of its alleged “religious” state and sought to prevent independent candidates and opposition nominees from bargaining with ‘Ikhwan’s’ candidates. Therefore, the group could neither restore its parliamentary representation nor manage to stop the brutality of the NDP against its candidates.
Clearly, the NDP reaped the benefits of the 2007 constitutional amendments which undermined judiciary supervision of the elections and tied up the MB during the campaign. Moreover, the regime manipulated all parties; the opposition, civil society monitors, and the media. So far, no one could prove elections rigging. Except for some YouTube videos and noisy condemnation domestically and internationally, the elections results seem unshakable. Yet, the predicament that NDP will face is how to fill up the vacuum of the MB members in the parliament.
In short, if the NDP has managed to eliminate the MB in the parliament, the real battle is still ongoing in the street, which, undoubtedly, will be fierce.
Khalil al-Anani is a PhD Scholar at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. He can be reached at: k.m.ibrahim[at]durham[dot]ac[dot]uk
