Egypt’s presidential election will take place late next month and that contest is expected to deliver Abdel Fattah El Sisi into office. If the result is almost a formality, the outcome of the contest will not simply be to put the former field marshal into office. The choices of existing political parties in the coming weeks will also serve to define the future political framework.
There has been some discussion about the percentage of votes Mr El Sisi may get in the first round of the election, with many expecting him to win an outright majority without the need for a second round. The private and state media apparatus has certainly made their preference clear, and few expects any other candidate to be given the same consideration. Yet, this has not led all political forces to support Mr El Sisi’s presidential candidature.
Take the example of the Constitution Party, which was founded by the former vice-president, Mohammed ElBaradei, who resigned his government position in protest at the violent dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-ins that left hundreds dead in August last year.
Earlier this week, the party formally endorsed Hamdeen Sabahi, the Nasserite politician who came third in the 2012 presidential elections. The party was split on the point: while around 60 per cent were in favour of endorsing Mr Sabahi, around a third supported boycotting the election altogether.
The boycott argument has garnered a substantial amount of support from within the non-Islamist, pro-Morsi camp.
A decree governing the forthcoming contest has granted the elections committee immunity from appeal, a decision that has invigorated proponents of a boycott, who are also concerned that such immunity for the committee may continue into the parliamentary elections.
During the constitutional referendum earlier this year, many supporters of a “no” vote were suppressed, and the European Union among others, criticised the arrest of “no” campaigners. That moment continues to haunt Egypt’s political scene.
The Constitution Party has made a risky move in this campaign. If Mr Sabahi does well and gains a respectable minority of the vote, the party can claim to have backed the only realistic civil alternative to a military man. If, however, Mr Sabahi is crushed in the elections, as many suspect he may be, the party would then be saddled with the stigma of a heavy defeat, from which it will be hard to recover. One could argue the party already suffers from a weak grassroots presence and if its political decision turns out to be misplaced, it will hurt the party even further.
Indeed, Mr Sabahi himself is already rumoured to find it difficult to get the requisite citizen endorsements to get his name on the ballot, so his presidential campaign is not off to a good start.
But the move by the Constitution Party will please those who believe in playing an active role in the new political dispensation.
A decision to boycott would be a decision to essentially proclaim the political system illegitimate, which would make it hard for the Constitution Party to contest parliamentary elections later this year.
Those elections will also be on the minds of other political forces intending to campaign for parliamentary seats.
Supporting Mr Sabahi may be a way for them to begin to form a credible opposition group, even while some political forces are considering a “neutral” stance on the point of endorsing a candidate. That neutrality is not simply due to the near certainty of Mr El Sisi claiming victory, but also down to serious divides evident within other political parties.
As they move towards parliamentary elections, all parties are trying to look past the presidential election. A draft law will eventually decide the format for parliamentary elections. The expectation is that the voting process will be a candidate-based system, rather than a list-based one.
If that is the case, only parties with significant financial resources behind them will stand much of a chance, which will not favour political parties such as the Constitution Party and others. A merger has been talked about between several left-wing parties for some months – the parliamentary elections may see this materialising, if only out of necessity for them to stay in the political game.
Opinion polls conducted before Mr Morsi’s removal last year indicated that political parties of every persuasion were incredibly unpopular. This is not quite what political forces after the 2011 uprising envisaged.
Many hoped that the protests would lead to a much more dynamic and vibrant political atmosphere.
Instead, the political arena is more or less resigned to the inevitability of a single presidential candidate, and the likelihood of a parliament that will be based less on genuine competition and more on access to financial resources. That suggests challenging times are ahead of Egypt.
Dr HA Hellyer is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and the Brookings Institution in Washington DC
On Twitter: @hahellyer
