Elbaradei calls elections ‘recipe for disaster’
CAIRO — Egypt’s streets are turning into a daily forum for airing a range of social discontents from labour conditions to fuel shortages and the casualties of myriad clashes over the past two years.
Parliamentary elections called over the weekend by the Islamist president hold out little hope for plucking the country out of the turmoil. If anything, the race is likely to fuel more unrest and push Egypt closer to economic collapse.
“The street has a life of its own and it has little to do with elections. It is about people wanting to make a living or make ends meet,” said Emad Gad, a prominent analyst and a former lawmaker.
Islamist President Mohammed Morsi called for parliamentary elections to start in late April and be held over four stages ending in June. He was obliged under the constitution to set the date for the vote by Saturday.
His decree brought a sharp reaction from Egypt’s key opposition leader, Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who said they would be a “recipe for disaster” given the polarization of the country and eroding state authority.
On Saturday, ElBaradei dropped a bombshell when he called for a boycott of the vote. An effective boycott by the opposition or widespread fraud would call the election’s legitimacy into question.
But in all likelihood, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and its ultraconservative Salafi allies will fare well in the vote. The Brotherhood has dominated every election in the two years since the 2011 uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
The mostly secular and liberal opposition will likely trail as they did in the last election for parliament’s law-making, lower house in late 2011 and early 2012 — a pattern consistent with every nationwide election post-Mubarak.
President Morsi’s Brotherhooddominated administration has been unable to curb the street protests, strikes and crime that have defined Egypt in the two years since the uprising.
In fact, the unrest has only grown more intense, more effective and has spread around the country in the nearly eight months that Morsi has been in office.
On any given day, a diverse variety of protesters across much of the troubled nation press demands of all sorts or voice opposition to Morsi and the Brotherhood. Sunday was a case in point. Thousands of brick workers blocked railroad tracks from a city south of Cairo for a second successive day to protest rising prices of industrial fuel oil, crippling transportation around the country of 85 million.
The rise resulted from the government’s decision last week to lift subsidies on some fuel prices. It is part of a reform program aimed at securing a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.