Battle for Egypt’s soul is an uncharted journey
Islamist victory not end of the story
CAIRO - Covering Egypt’s political adventures and misadventures is like a journey without maps.
Egypt’s top general called Tuesday for unity talks between Islamists and secularists over their irreconcilable differences over the Islamist-backed constitution. By Wednesday we were told the invitation had never actually been issued and we should forget about it.
The opposition — a fractious hodgepodge of communists, socialists, liberals, Christians and devout moderates — spent the past week indicating that they will boycott Saturday’s referendum on the draft constitution. But after a lot of dithering they announced Wednesday that their supporters should vote. But there might still be a last-minute boycott if a list of conditions are not met — and they will not be met — by the government of President Mohammed Morsi.
On Wednesday the president suddenly declared that the referendum would now be held over the next two Saturdays instead of just this Saturday. The hiccup was that most of the judges, who are required to oversee voting, have said they want no part of it. So, to provide sufficient oversight at all the polling stations, those few judges willing to help out are to be dragooned into doing this twice.
There is also the matter of the media coverage, both foreign and local. This drama has involved compelling street theatre, seriously complicated by religion, by emotion and by the importance of Egypt as the Arab world’s historic intellectual leader and conscience.
But either to make this big story even bigger or perhaps to impress faraway editors, journalists have been constantly exaggerating the number of protesters who have turned out.
I first noticed this legerdemain during voting for the first post-Hosni Mubarak parliament over three months last winter. As CNN and the BBC were telling the world that hundreds of thousands of protesters had massed in Tahrir Square, I looked out my hotel window at a far less spectacular scene below. No matter how generous I was with my count, I could never honestly conclude that there were more than 30,000 people in Tahrir. Frankly, even that was a generous estimate.
The same overly generous body counts have been repeated over the past two weeks.
None of these blind alleys or fibs obscure the reality that Egypt is in agony over its future or that the situa- tion could spin in a deadly direction at any time. The Islamists sometimes talk as if they expect that Egypt will become a theocracy and that they will be glad of it. Those who oppose the Islamists have warned that they will resist this because it would be worse than the cruel autocracy that the Islamists and the secularists joined hands to ditch early last year.
Also hard to understand has been the odd behaviour of the military. A few days ago the generals suggested that martial law might be imposed if government institutions were not respected. Some in the secularist camp speculated (or even hoped) that the military might stage a coup.
My best guess is that the referendum will still take place and that the Islamists will handily win this round in the battle for Egypt’s soul. However, Egypt remains on a political journey without maps. There may be more dark surprises before Saturday. There will certainly be unexpected twists and fresh protests before the next showdown in February when the draft constitution mandates fresh parliamentary elections.