THE EXCLUSION on “technical” grounds of 10 of the candidates in Egypt’s presidential election has thrown a poll that was to mark the culmination of the country’s transition from dictatorship into confusion and cast a shadow over the election’s democratic credentials. The generals are due to hand power to the new president by July 1st and the latest drama saw new accusations they were trying to prolong their influence. The exclusions, however, were at least even-handed in removing the most polarising contenders across the board.
The irony is that two excluded leading candidates have been hoist by their own petards – Omar Suleiman, former intelligence chief to deposed Hosni Mubarak, was tripped up by cumbersome supporter-signatory requirements put in place precisely to discourage challenges to the latter, while ultraconservative, Salafist Hazem Abu Ismail, debarred because his mother had allegedly acquired a US passport, was tripped up by rules fellow conservatives added to keep out liberals suspected of ties to the West.
A third disqualified leading candidate, Khairat al-Shater – because of a criminal record arising from a political trial in the Mubarak era – is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood. His candidacy had caused some surprise as the group had promised not to run, despite success in the parliamentary polls, to allay fears of an Islamist takeover. The brotherhood, however, has a fallback, Mohamed Morsi, who has survived the purge.
Suleiman’s candidacy was equally controversial. As Mubarak’s right-hand man – his campaign manager is his former chief of staff in the spy service who began running the campaign from its headquarters – he had made it clear he did not believe Egypt to be yet ready for democracy, and has been very hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated majority now in parliament.
The exclusions, if they stand on appeal, and the earlier withdrawal of the Coptic Church and various liberals from the election process, are likely to assist two remaining front-runners: Amr Moussa, a former Arab League secretary general and Egyptian foreign minister, who is backed by secularists and liberals, and Abdul Moneim Abol Fotouh, a brotherhood renegade, expelled last year and who has opposed Islamicisation of the state. Observers suggest that both might have the ability to bridge the gulf between the country’s pious majority and secular communities. But the exclusion of their main rivals from the process hardly bodes well for their legitimacy, or that of Egyptian politics in general.