Egypt’s liberals and the elections

[NNN0LHI]

http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContentP/4/30260/Opinion/Egypt%E2%80%99s-liberals-and-the-elections.aspx

While it is important to understand what advantages Islamists had in the elections, it is also important to understand where liberal and secular forces failed

B M Sabry , Saturday 31 Dec 2011

“Panicked” doesn’t even begin to describe the feelings of many of Egypt’s more liberal and secular citizens. The results of the first and second rounds of the nation’s first apparently free parliamentary elections have been nothing but cause for serious existential introspection for the country’s entire liberal movement. In fact, many outside of Egypt share the same disheartened emotion, whether in the public sphere or governmental circles. To be sure, almost everyone expected an outright Islamist victory and majority in parliament, but few expected such staggering scores, with the Islamists set to easily dominate eventually at least 65-70 per cent of parliament. The one side of the debate that grabbed most of the headlines and airtime centered on why Islamists were doing so well. But the question of why the liberals haven’t done as well is equally important.

First, and perhaps foremost, there’s the question of defining what the ideologies themselves mean to the people. The words “liberalism” and “secularism” themselves have been under heavy assault for decades in Egypt, and much of the Arab world, most particularly so since the end of the January revolution, framed as the antithesis of everything that a tradition-respecting Egyptian should call for. And both liberals and seculars have failed to project an alternative and proper public image and understanding, or create a uniform, clear, realistic and attractive message that could rationally appeal to a wide base of predominantly conservative citizens and voters. In fact, they often appeared to the public just as the opposition to conservative political forces, rather than entities with their own clear and unique project. This failure was both the result of the apparent lack of presence of such a consensual, consistent, coherent and presentable mainstream ideological construct from the start, as well as the difficulty of defining in clear terms the proposed delicate legal and de facto relationships between liberty and tradition in a society like Egypt.

[Uncle Joe]

1. When a nation's media becomes corrupted, its' choices become limited, one of Mubarak's legacies.

Thanks for the thread, NNNOLHI.