A few weeks ago, Egypt had 50 presidential candidates. Last week, it had 23, this week only 12.
The first round of voting in Egypt’s first free presidential election is scheduled for May 23 and 24 (with a second round a month later if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote), yet many Egyptians regard the official candidate list as flawed because a body called the High Election Council had the final say on who could run.
The council has indeed excluded several serious candidates, yet voters still have a fair selection.
The 12 candidates share certain traits; first, all are in their 60s or 70s in a country in which 60 percent of the population is below age 30.
That, however, may not be so bad, if only because Egypt would do better with a one-term president; a younger man might develop self-perpetuating ambitions and dictatorial tendencies.
Second, none is the first choice of his constituency.
Front-runner Amr Moussa, who served the fallen regime for some 50 years, is the second (or third) choice of those who hope to maintain at least some old structures; most would’ve preferred former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman or former Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq, both barred from running.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s first choice was Khairat al-Shater; when he was barred, it picked Muhammad Mursi.
The secular democratic forces wanted former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Muhammad El-Baradaei, but now must rally around Hamdin Subahi, of the Assembly coalition.
The hardline Islamist Salafists also lost their first choice, Hazim Abu Ismail, because his mother had obtained US citizenship. Now they must either boycott or vote for one of the two remaining Islamist candidates.
A third Islamist group, the Gamaa Islamiyah (Islamic Society), was denied its own candidate because most of its leaders had criminal records. This week, it backed Abdel-Monem Aboul-Fotuh, a dissident Brotherhood leader running as an independent.
More important, perhaps, all the candidates played virtually no role in the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s despotic regime — but, paradoxically, that, too, might not be a bad thing. Having been spectators as youthful revolutionaries shook the regime, most Egyptians would feel more comfortable with a moderate leadership, at least during a transition.
Finally, all 12 candidates are men, although in Egypt women are the majority.
It’d be easy to write off the whole exercise as a failure.
How could a youth-led revolution produce a conservative regime dominated by septuagenarians? And what if an Islamist is elected, allowing the Brotherhood and the more radical Salafists to dominate the new government?
In the recent parliamentary election, two rival Islamist coalitions collected 49 percent of the vote and ended up with 65 percent of the seats. So if all Islamists voted for a single presidential candidate, he’d have a strong chance of winning. But signs indicate this won’t happen.
Mursi is a boring candidate and, relying on the Brotherhood’s machine, hasn’t campaigned on the ground.
The Brotherhood suffers from the fact that it was caught lying. It initially insisted that it wouldn’t field a candidate because it wanted to share power, and it now offers no program beyond insipid generalities.
The dissident Aboul-Fotuh is more charismatic and a better campaigner than Mursi — but he, too, has found it hard to broaden his support.
Although Amr Moussa is in his late 70s, the former secretary-general of the Arab League has shown a taste for campaigning that few suspected, visiting every province and holding more than 100 rallies. He also has forged a broad alliance that includes Nasserists, secular groups and the Coptic Christian minority.
The coming election, its obvious shortcomings notwithstanding, is a victory for Egyptians. For the first time, they have a real choice, albeit a narrow one.
It isn’t ideal, but in politics, as in life, the ideal can become the enemy of the real.