Egypt's elections: Dirty tricks | The Economist:

FIRST came unsigned leaflets claiming that the candidate for the Egyptian Bloc, a secularist group, was a communist atheist. Then pamphlets accusing him of being a capitalist crony of the disgraced former regime appeared. Other rumours swirled around the parliamentary district in rural Upper Egypt where he was standing. Some said the Egyptian Bloc was backed by Freemasons and Jews. Others fingered the Coptic Church. On the morning of the vote, pick-up trucks mounted with megaphones fanned out to deliver a coup de grace. Congratulations to the Egyptian Bloc, they blared. Its candidate has been appointed a cabinet minister in Cairo and has withdrawn from the race.

Politics is a rough game everywhere. As it happens the Egyptian Bloc won that seat anyway. But one might have expected a gentler touch from the Islamist parties contesting Egypt's first free parliamentary elections in decades, which enter the second of three regional rounds of voting this week. The Islamists claim the high moral ground, saying they want a return to the principles and values of the pure faith. Yet Egypt's two main Islamist political forces, the Muslim Brotherhood and the puritan Salafists, which together look set to capture as many as two thirds of parliamentary seats, are playing electoral hardball not only against their secular opponents, but against each other too.

What strikes me is that not more dirty tricks have been used against Islamists. The former regime use to be pretty good at it, and they are vulnerable to charges of working for foreign interests (Saudi, Iran...) as well as (perversely) accusations of religious heresy: Salafis as against traditional Islam (the Sufi line) or crypto-al-Qaeda, Muslim Brothers as being a secret society with a bizarre worship of Hassan al-Banna (a frequent Salafi line of attack), use their morality against them by staging sting operations, alleging affairs, etc. Granted some of this has been done by secularists complaining about the Salafis being Saudi-funded, but that's pretty minor compared to the Salafis' (illegal) use of mosques for electioneering, etc.

The second round of Egypt's interminable elections for the People's Assembly, the lower house of parliament, began this morning with little trouble. Here's a few things to look out for, since the extended process means lessons are being learned from earlier rounds:

• The SCAF has promised to be more vigilant about campaign violations, since hundreds of complaints (including about a dozen lawsuits to have the whole elections cancelled) have been filed. Let's see if they enforce things more stringently this time around — personally, I doubt it. But at least they will have had more time to prepare and get things right inside the polling stations.
• Last round, there were long queues on the first day of voting and few people out the second. This time around, expect some voters to skip the first day expecting the second to be faster.
• Attempts by secular forces to coordinate their strategies and pick winners in certain districts will be tried in some places, even if coalitions such as Revolution Continues haev expressed unwillingness to deal with Egyptian Bloc candidates with ties to the old regime. I expect very limited success for this strategy because it was too late to take candidates off the ballot, and no one has the reach to marshall voters into casting their ballot more strategically.
• That being said, voters will take their own initiative. I suspect the Egyptian Bloc, being the big winner among the secular parties in the first round, will be the logical choice for tactical voting.
• Expect the FJP-Nour battle to intensify, particularly for IC seats. Nour lost most of those in the runoff last time, while the FJP was taken off-guard by Nour's succcess in the first round. I wouldn't be surprised if we see tensions between FJP and Nour supporters, either.
• Menoufiya is a stronghold for the Muslim Brothers, but also for the felool. Lookout for the races in the Sadat family strongholds in the south, in Menouf and near Ahmed Ezz's steel factory, in Bagour in Kamal al-Shazli's old fiefdom.
• Beheira might also be interesting — expect it to go strongly MB with a possible sweet vengeance for local Damanhour son Gamal Heshmat, a member of the MB's Political Bureau and a victim of NDP machinations in the last decade (I'm not sure he's running, but in any case I expect FJP to get much sympathy for the past abuses they suffered there.)
• Sharqiya is mixed, but I wonder if the Wafd will do well there as it has done in the past through the Abaza family. My hunch is that the new electoral system creates districts that are too big to be used in this way (which is why the "big families" have failed thus far)
• Ismailiya and Suez: the former a conservative stronghold, would not be surprised if Nour does well there, the latter a strong working class and revolutionary presence — perhaps giving Revolution Continues a boost.
• I fear a Salafi triumph in Beni Suef, one of the most neglected governorates in Egypt, and Sohag will give us more indications of the Upper Egyptian vote: good chances there for the Egyptian Bloc due to a sizeable Christian population, and a test for the "big families" that once were for the NDP. These did not do well in Assiut (partly because the FJP and Egyptian Bloc has strong candidates), but Assiut is cosmopolitan compared to Sohag.

This is a guest post by Nathan Field.

One of the major themes I’ve noticed in the media after the Salafi al-Nour party won 25% of the votes in the first round of Egyptian elections was a surprise (or as in this week’s In Translation – anger). Yet their success shouldn’t be considered a surprise. Here are four points to ponder:

(1) Most popular T.V. stations to 25% of the votes isn’t a huge jump:

In 2008 Ahmed Hamam and I talked to dozens of Egyptian Salafis, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and various journalists and academics for a study on Salafi Satellite TV Stations in Egypt, published in Arab Media and Society in April 2009.

While precise Nielsen-style statistics don’t exist in Egypt, the general consensus was that Salafi-oriented TV stations such as Al-Nass and Al-Rahma, featuring charismatic preachers like Mohamed Hassan, were drawing higher ratings than any other TV stations in Egypt. So the evidence of the popularity of Salafism has been clear for years.

(2) Salafis were never against politics in theory:

Critics have accused Salafis of hypocrisy for entering electoral politics post-Revolution. An accusation that assumes Salafis were somehow “quietist” or against participation in politics on principle. This is not true; their discourse has always been “political” and entering electoral politics is a logical post-Mubarak step.

The basic Salafi worldview is that society is broken and needs to be reformed (that’s a very political statement). However, the acceptable means for achieving that reform are dictated by the situation in the society they are operating in. During the Mubarak era, Salafis judged that they couldn’t achieve meaningful reform by trying to get involved in politics, so they focused on preaching, i.e. teaching Egytians how to be better Muslims. However, post-February 2011, the equation changed and as the political process opened up, they saw an opportunity to achieve change by working within the system, and without having to compromise on their values. In fact, if they didn’t enter the political game, they would probably have lost support.

(3) Don’t underestimate the “hustle” factor:

Read this excellent article by David Kirkpatrick to understand why Salafis will continue to be a major force in Egyptian politics.  In Egypt, the gaps between the different social classes are huge, culturally as much as economically and the fact is, there is often a condacscneing tendency towards the lower elements of society by those on the upper half.  And that doesn’t work in the political  favor of some of the Liberal Activist groups.

Egyptian liberals would be wise to study the example John Kennedy set when he won his first seat in Congress in 1952.  Despite being from one of the richest and most powerful families in America, John Kennedy went door-to-door in some of the toughest neighborhoods of Boston and simply listened to what average people had to say.   He figured out what they thought important and learned how to communicate effectively to people from all walks of society.  Eventually (but not at first) he became as persuasive addressing a room full of factory workers as he was a group of university professors. 

Stumping for votes is an essential ingredient of success in competitive democratic elections  but so far the liberals have been at a serious self-inflicted disadvantage. They either focus on the biggest picture of issues (such as the constitution) that don’t resonate with most average people, or they aren’t disposed to wander through the slums asking poor people about their needs. 

Bottom line:  if they don’t get better on this front, they won’t be competitive in future elections.  No one is entitled to votes on the basis of their ideas alone! The Salafis are significantly out-hustling the competition and that largely explains their success so far." 

(4) Don’t blame Saudi Arabia – they are a genuine grassroots Egyptian movement:

Critics of Salafism like to argue that they are a “Saudi import,” usually as an attempt to discredit them. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was asked this question at a recent conference in Washington DC and gave what I think is the best answer: there is not likely official, meaningful support from Saudi or other governments in the Gulf for the Salafis, especially for their post-February political activities. The Saudis are not in the business of encouraging other Islamist alternatives so its hard to see what they would gain. However, if the Salafis are receiving external funding from the Gulf, it would likely be from private individuals or institutions in the context of zakat.

Nathan Field is the Co-Founder of Industry Arabic.

Caveat Emptor

Before we delve into the charts to analyse the results, a word of caution: while the results for the individual candidacy (IC) districts are official, there will be runoffs in all but four districts on Monday, and there could still be changes due to legal challenges due to campaign violations. Still, there is valuable information to be mined here for various purposes: seeing who the runoffs are between and voting accordingly — for instance if you're a liberal can't stand the Salafists, you might vote for their Muslim Brotherhood competitor just to ward them off, or conversely you may want to seek out those districts where a non-Islamist may still stand a chance. Likewise if you're a Muslim Brother, this shows which districts are battlegrounds to concentrate on — there are many districts split between Salafists and Brothers, for instance.

Even more caution is necessary with the proportional representation (PR) districts, for which all results and estimates used below have been collated from the media, since there have been no official announcements. Eventually, for both IC and PR districts, it will be fascinating to see the complete information on the votes cast — anecdotally, we for instance know that in a place like Fayoum district #2 — mostly split between the Salafists and the Brothers — one-third of votes got wasted on tiny parties that stood no chance. 

For the meantime, considering the appalling lack of diligence and transparency of the Higher Elections Commission, we must make do with what we have.

The big picture

The above map, based on our previous chart of Egypt's political parties, represents more or less the ones that have garnered enough votes to count, with each party represented according to the number of seats it obtained (or may obtain following runoffs). This picture is unlikely to change much in the remaining two rounds, and shows three big political forces: The Muslim Brothers' FJP, the Salafists (especially the Nour Party), and the Egyptian Bloc alliance led by the Free Egyptians and the Social Democratic Party. Get this chart in PDF.

The breakdown

Both the breakdowns of IC and PR races are important, but differently: for IC, the runoffs are on Monday and voters will be interested to see if their candidate of first choice made it, and if not who else they might vote for. This will be particularly important for voters interested in avoiding a certain type of candidate (say across the Islamist-secular divide) and, because there are so many FJP vs. Nour races, there will be a lot of incentives for the Muslim Brothers to rally secularists to their side with the argument that at least they are not Salafists. Or, for some people who can't stand the Muslim Brothers, to back the Salafists to make sure they don't get in (this sentiment may very well be prevalent considering the bad press the Brothers have gotten from the regime over the last few decades as agents of Iran, Hamas, freemasonry, etc.)

Here's a graphic representation of the first round, pre-runoff results for both IC and PR I put together that should enable readers to quickly see the hot races. For details on who is running, we have a full list of the IC results (and some PR results) at the bottom of this post that includes the candidates' names.

 

You'll probably want to download the PDF version of this image, which is a lot easier to read and is formatted to be printed on A4 paper (in color obviously). Our count makes the runoffs as follows:

FJP v. Nour: 22 FJP v. EB: 6 FJP v. felools: 4 FJP v. independents: 10 FJP v. Wafd: 1

Nour v. EB: 1 EB v. Independents: 1 Nour v. Adl: 1 Felool v. Nour: 1 Nour v. independents.: 1

As the two leading parties nationally, the FJP and Nour are running close races in a lot of districts. But the third party, the Egyptian Bloc, also has a chance at getting an additional 8 seats, although it tends to be the underdog. Cairenes alone have a chance at getting another four MPs from the Egyptian Bloc.

The full data that went into making these charts is available in PDF. It includes full results when available or at least, for PR districts, the order in which the parties came. Please let us know in the comments if you spot any errors.

Wait, there's more

I'd also like to highlight a couple of other charts a reader sent in.

The first one, by Mostafa El-Hoshy compares Salafist vs. other Islamist votes:

By Mostafa El-Hoshy — click for full sizeThe chart shows the degree to which voters went for Islamist parties generally — over half in most places and about two-thirds generally, and then the split among Islamist parties between the Salafists and the rest (i.e. mainly the Muslim Brotherhood.) What's striking here is that while the Brothers have the lead generally, their margin (the non-Salafi Win Differential) is quite small along the northern Delta and in the Fayoum — all places where the Brothers have a long-established presence. We still have much to learn about the Salafist electoral machine, but that alone is quite an achievement considering they never ran for office before. Whether it's grassroots, money or effective campaigning remains a mystery to me.

The second is also by Mostafa El-Hoshy, and compares Islamist vs. non-Islamist votes (I don't know whether parties such as al-Tayyar al-Masri, al-Adl, al-Wassat and others that may be "Islamist Lite" are included.) It's pretty self-explanatory.By Mostafa El-Hoshy — click to enlarge

You can get the spreadsheet with data for these last two charts here.

The Lions of Qasr al-Nil Bridge

Here’s an exercise in how I think the votes in the proportional part of Egypt’s parliamentary elections will be calculated. Let’s take the beautiful district of Kasr al-Nil — the Fighting Lions! — where The Arabist is based, covering parts of Downtown Cairo and the tony island of Zamalek. This district slants liberal compared to the rest of the country. These are the results that have been published in the press:

• Freedom and Justice: 162,841 votes
• Egyptian Bloc: 73,183 votes
• al-Wafd: 59,807 votes
• al-Nour: 59,184 votes
• New Independents (Ex-NDP): 28,233 votes

A quick note: the district borders are somewhat different, but a friend ran for parliament in this district in 2000 and the winner (not him) only needed about 3,000 votes. Tells you a lot about how participation has increased.

In Kasr al-Nil district, you have a total of eight seats. Take the total number of votes cast (an approximation if you only use the five top parties above — I don’t have data for the rest), and that makes 47,861 votes per seat. In other words, each seat is worth 47861 votes. You compare that figure to the result of each party that obtained at least that number of votes and get:

• FJP: 3 seats + 18,898 remainder
• Egyptian Bloc: 1 seat + 25,322 remainder
• al-Wafd: 1 seat + 11,946 remainder
• al-Nour: 1 seat + 11,323 remainder

Now, you still have two seat unassigned. These go to the two largest largest remainders: the New Independents (who didn’t get a seat at first but still got more votes than anyone else’s remainder) and the Egyptian Bloc, which has the largest remainder of the parties above.

Final results: 

• Freedom and Justice: 3 seats
• Egyptian Bloc: 2 seats
• al-Wafd: 1 seat
• al-Nour: 1 seat
• New Independents: 1 seat

Does this make sense? Let me know if you spotted a mistake, and of course these results could apparently still change by the end of the elections because of a) the uncertainty of whether a national threshold of votes is needed (in which case the New Independents could very well lose their seat, which will go to the FJP which has the next largest remainder) and b) the need to adjust results to ensure that half of parliament is composed of workers/farmer seats.