CAIRO: Egypt’s liberals are working on a fight back in a parliamentary race that has left them trailing Islamists, and could try to regain the initiative by exploiting sharp divisions in their opponents’ camp.
Islamists may have borne the brunt of ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s repressive policies, but liberals were also shunted to the political sidelines and left in disarray when he fell.
Unlike Islamists who could rely on grassroots support built up over decades through social work or networks of mosques they control, new liberal parties have had to build up their base almost from scratch in just a few months.
First-round results from Egypt’s staggered election that will take six weeks to complete, gave Islamist-led alliances about two-thirds of the votes for party lists, with the rest going to others including liberals like the Egyptian Bloc.
"It was not surprising that Islamists have done so well. But it was surprising that a very young liberal group with no history or experience managed to … get such a big percentage of the vote," said Ahmed Saeed, a businessman-turned-politician assured of a seat after the Bloc took 13 percent of list votes.
But they don’t doubt the challenge ahead. Liberals say a lack of coordination meant the liberal vote was split. Analysts say they also need to shake-off the negative tag of "anti-Islamist," a big handicap in a religiously conservative nation.
Yet, Islamists will not have it all their own way. Divisions between the ultra-conservative Salafi Islamists and more moderate Muslim Brotherhood will give liberals and other voices the opportunity to hold an influential place even as a minority.
"Even if their seats are not that many, everyone will need the liberal parties. They need them to pass laws or obstruct their passage," said Adel Soliman of the International Center for Future and Strategic Studies.
The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) took 37 percent of the list vote so far, while the Salafi Al-Nour party and two allies won a surprise 24 percent, according to numbers released before the turnout figures was revised sharply down.
Neither group shows much interest in joining forces in parliament. "The clash that is expected is one between the two Islamist camps, because they both think they hold the truth and such a clash is inevitable," Soliman said.
Learning from experience
Diluting some of the Islamist share, the FJP’s own list includes smaller liberal and leftist parties, such as Al-Karama and Al-Ghad, which will together take a handful of seats.
The complex electoral system means the final make-up of the next parliament is far from clear. Two thirds of the 498 elected seats will be decided by proportional representation and one third won directly by individual candidates.
Liberals are already learning from their early experience at the polls and are tweaking their campaigns accordingly.
Several smaller parties have thrown their weight behind the Bloc to show a more united front. Members of the Bloc also say they are more actively heading out of their strongholds among the urban elite into rural areas, in particular seeking to win over support of local notables to build broader support.
Poor coordination among non-Islamist groups has meant that votes got scattered across several like-minded candidates, sometimes handing the majority to an Islamist by default.
"There should have been better coordination. That is what we are trying to do now, to lower the chance of internal battles," said youth candidate Shahir George of the Revolution Continues alliance — a coalition of parties and movements from across the spectrum.
The Egyptian Bloc is also giving a new push to its advertising campaign, relying on the deep pockets of some of its business executive backers such as billionaire telecoms tycoon Naguib Sawiris, a co-founder of the Bloc’s Free Egyptians Party.
Part of the Bloc’s drive plays on fears of what impact Islamists in power could have on tourism. One in eight Egyptians work in the industry which could be hurt by imposing strict Islamic rules to ban alcohol or bare flesh on beaches.
"We don’t want to have Afghanistan or America, we want Egypt," runs one slogan, making clear they shun both a fully fledged Western model and the Islamic strictures of Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Alternative vision
Yet, this kind of approach may be part of the problem, say analysts, as it defines the liberal camp as anti-Islamist rather than offering an alternative vision for Egypt.
"Liberals made the mistake and keep on making the mistake of being the anti-Islamist choice," Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, said.
"There is a ceiling to that and if they want to become a mass party that is able to reach out to a larger number of Egyptians, they have to learn to speak the language of religion," he added.
The Bloc also has to counter rivals branding it a Christian party, partly because of backing by people like Sawiris who is an outspoken Christian, often vocally attacking Islamism.
One advert circulating on Facebook, which the Bloc says is part of an Islamist-led smear campaign, suggested that voting for the Bloc was a vote "for the Egyptian church."
Christians make up roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s 80-million-strong population and some church leaders have publicly endorsed the Bloc, drawn by its non-religious nature.
Older liberal parties, such as Al-Wafd, that existed during Mubarak’s era, also face the stigma that they were co-opted under the old order. Al-Wafd, a decades-old party that got about 7 percent of the list vote, had seats in parliament under Mubarak but few saw it as an effective opponent of his deposed regime.
Instead, the loudest and most organized opposition under Mubarak came from the 83-year-old Brotherhood, formally banned but semi-tolerated. It now has disciplined supporters and name recognition among a dizzying array of new parties.
Liberals are just starting to build a base, said political scientist Ammar Ali Hassan, adding that it had an opportunity to use its parliamentary bloc, regardless of its size, to show an ability to govern successfully.
"Liberals have a chance to build a stronger social network and they now have parliamentary representation that they will use to communicate directly with the people, something denied to liberal parties before," he said.
"Liberalism never really existed in Egypt. The ideas of liberalism were only in books — in old books. Now, it actually exists on the ground. I believe that the future is for liberal parties in the upcoming elections after this one." –Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh
