The wisdom of the Tao has been demonstrated time and again in post-25 Jan Egypt. Doing something about a seemingly sticky situation isn’t always going to make it less sticky. This was especially relevant to the supposed urgent need for a president but few realised that until it was too late. The error began with the referendum on constitutional amendments. The yes vote ignored the deeper implications of the triumph of the revolution for the military core of the incompetent regime overthrown in the course of it. It also ignored the hyena-like readiness of the Muslim Brotherhood — nee the opposition — to pounce on the opportunity thus presented for replacing said regime, not through offering up the kind of sacrifices that eventually forced Mubarak to step down, but by fondling the selfsame military core. It was disgusting.
The alliance between Brotherhood and SCAF could not last indefinitely, of course. But it did ensure the emergence of a Brotherhood-dominated parliament just as corrupt and ineffectual re the aims of the revolution as Mubarak’s, notwithstanding the fact that the majority of “revolutionaries”, seized by the usual proactive frenzy, saw fit to participate in the “democratic wedding” that brought about that parliament even as their brothers in arms were being massacred on orders from the secret groom. It didn’t occur to them, and it didn’t convince them when it was spelled out, that by boycotting the parliamentary elections they might have formed a front of revolutionary opposition through which to face Brotherhood-backed Salafi MPs applauding the Minister of Interior for announcing that no pellets were used against protesters while pellets were quite patently being used against protesters even as the announcement was made in session.
None of it was enough to realise that boycotting SCAF-mediated elections was no passive copout but, like the revolution itself, an attempt to bypass the institutional impasse into which Egyptian politics had solidified. Over the previous two decades, that impasse had broadened enough to include an opposition as pragmatic and power-hungry as it was retrograde — hence not only the Brotherhood’s alliance with SCAF at the expense of ongoing protests but also its “wisdom” vis-a-vis the, well, genocide to which such protests were repeatedly subjected.
Once again, “revolutionary candidates” like the “moderate” Islamist-cum-liberal Abdelmoneim Abulfetouh and the “progressive” Nasserist-cum-liberal Hamdeen Sabbahi preferred the proactive, after-all-I’m-going-to-be-president path. They not only ran in the absence of a constitution to determine their powers once in office. They also ran without the legal reforms necessary to prevent the wedding from turning into an evening at the bordello. The result, more or less predictably, was that they lost the first round of the elections — and to who but Ahmad Shafik and Mohammed Morsi — the very candidates of SCAF and the Brotherhood, respectively? Still, “revolutionary leaders” including the dentist-stroke-novelist Alaa El-Aswany and the activist Alaa Abdelfattah had the nerve to respond instantly to that by declaring support for Morsi (on the premise that the Brotherhood was a lesser evil than SCAF?) It was disgusting.
And, having agreed to run under these conditions, having accepted the decision not to implement the disfranchisement law that would prevent Shafik from running — like a child who, realising he is losing the game, throws a tantrum and throws the ball over the fence of the playground — Abulfetouh and Sabbahi now look not only bad but positively anti-democratic as, once again taking to Tahrir, they reject the results of the elections. The Brotherhood, meanwhile, is acting perfectly in character: Let’s use such revolutionary discontent in our electoral campaign to help Morsi win; if he wins, we celebrate democracy; if nor, we join the revolutionaries in Tahrir. I am pretty sure Brotherhood members have actually said as much in public. Only now do boycott and spoil-your-vote campaigns gain any ground, even though “the revolution’s stance” is to demand a presidential council and/or the implementation of the disfranchisement law by further, futile protests.
It is disgusting.