Egypt's elections

We speak of the Egyptian elections as a game of 'dirty tricks' where parties hurl insults at each other. I'd like to know where in the western world this does not occur. No where is this more apparent than the US elections where Hillary Clinton's team resorted to dirty tricks against Obama. Obama was even labelled a Muslim by the Republicans in order to scare away people. How about the birthing story about the President where he had to settle rumors about his birthplace.

More recently, Mitt Romney as well as John Kerry have been vilified for speaking French. No where in the western world do we see an electorate like in the US that's fed an unbelievable amount of misinformation.

'Dirty tricks' is not unique to Egypt even if we were to afford some credence to this claim. We can be sure about one thing...in the Muslim world whenever a party is elected in a fair elections and that party does not pay complete homage to US interests, we can be sure to expect many fancy article written by fancy academic denouncing fair elections wherever in the world.

Hi,
Egypt's elections Dirty tricks or just trick?
Strange things are going on in Egypt. The searching and confiscating of material from many foreign institutions has coursed anger and dismay, this especially with the Germans. Reasons given are fussy, it could be they are look for evidence of arming the rebels rebels rebels.
Regards Terence Hale

@ Cherif R:

"If they act like "Sons of Mubarak" or "Mubarak II" then, in five or fifty years they will be thrown out violently or otherwise, and the people will have learned."

More probably they'll act like "Sons of Khomeini", and it's highly questionable if the people who freely if not very democratically elected them will have ever learned.

It took Reagan and Thatcher to demolish the communist caliphate, and for more than twenty years after that the true believers continued to elect slightly disguised the same... can't see why it'll be different in Egypt.

please check out http://www.islamicsolutions.com/who-killed-shaikh-emad-effat/

Re: Dirty Tricks
Perhaps for once you got some of your facts right, as far as they went. You barely scratched the surface.

The secular opponents are weak and ill organized indeed. What you fail to mention is that they were formed as a coalition and as individual parties barely six months ago. The Muslim Brotherhood have been around for 80 years as an organized group, the Salsfis for at least 20.
These Islamists have recieved financing to the tune of 1.8 billion dollars (over 100 billion egyptian pounds)from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They bought a multi storey headquarters in Cairo for 50 million egyptian pounds. The secularists Rent an apartment in Cairo for three thousand pound (500 dollars) a month!!

As for transgressions during what - the international press, yours included, like to refer to as Free & Fair Elections and the First Step to Democracy; these have been countless. Muslim women covered from head to toe refused to reveal their faces to election invigilators, one woman voted 15 times (I.D. cards were rented out at 100 pounds a shot); poor households received as much as 700-900
pounds per. as well as food stuffs. Cell phones were distributed to voters to take photos of their voting forms, if they voted as requested they got to keep the phone and as much as 500 pounds. In other places a vote for the Muslims went for 1000 pounds.

Please tell all the facts don't just skim the surface and then patronizingly call it a good first step. It is a lousy first step and lousy reporting to boot.

For your information, I doubt you will address this ever, the so called competition between Salafis and brotherhood is contrived.
Assured of a majority they have formally kissed and made up and are now setting joint strategies for ruling Egypt forever.

How can it have escaped you that the Salafis, Gamaa (whose member assasinated Sadat and admitted it openly was recently set free still repeating the same phrase "I killed the dog"), also Gihad and other groups- they are all nothing more than a cat's paw to the main Brotherhood permitting them to dissimulate and spout moderation they have no intention of observing.

Of course the support the Islamists got from the Saudis and Qataris
was not mere charity to fellow Muslims it is to ensure forming a Sunni Theocracy (under any other name, but still a rose)to stand up to the Shiaa Theocracy in Iran, of which they are scared shitless and which only a populous nation like Egypt can stand up to.

Had you bothered to read mine and other comments you would have known. Of course that would have required pulling your journalistic head out of the sand.

I witnessed some FJP activity first hand from our neighborhood in Maadi, Cairo. At first I thought they were more clever than their counterparts (true), but then I realized it was all against the law. Here is my reflection of disappointment with them as politicians-cum-Muslims: http://asenseofbelonging.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/disappointment-with-th...

@ Ah Beng: “Islam is a religion that is fundamentally at odds with everything modern and western and no Muslim can ever be a participant in a liberal Democracy”

No one has told it better! Not even Economist's geniuses... you're da man!

@ Pax Indica: “Infant democracies are imperfect.”

The new Egyptian regime is l'enfant terrible musulmane, not an infant democracy.

@ Drew 101:

American elections, fair or otherwise, have nothing to do with Moslem Brotherhood. There are plenty of America bashing forums for those who feel warmth and... ehem... growing in their lower parts only when they bark at America.

Unfortunately, Democracy is not simply the absence of a dictator.

Infant democracies are imperfect. Many mature democracies are less imperfect. Democracy has a way of holding a mirror to society's intelligence, which will always be flawed, to varying degrees, but with time things get better the longer the mirror is held up.

The only thing the world should hope for of Egypt and any other infant democracy is that democracy there survives. As long as that happens, everything will get better with time.

Why don't you publish anything about election fraud in US?
http://www.truth-out.org/forensic-analysis-finds-venango-county/1323877922

Why don't you publish anything about election fraud in US?
http://www.truth-out.org/forensic-analysis-finds-venango-county/1323877922

All you people unwilling to give a Muslim nation a chance at Democracy disgust me. Clearly, because Islam is a religion that is fundamentally at odds with everything modern and western and no Muslim can ever be a participant in a liberal Democracy, we're going to see everything backslide into a medieval theocracy.

Or we could get Turkey. Not perfect, but a whole lot better than a Caliphate.

It takes more than elections to build democracy. You need CULTURAL change too. The people need to have democratic values for it to work. These values aren't something that can be imposed from outside: the Egyptian people will have to figure it out for themselves in their own way.

...that said this article seems one-sided. It almost reads as an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the results of the election. Would this article have been different if secular parties had won more votes? Were secular parties accused of dirty tricks, and why doesn't the article discuss this?

Just look at the recent Russian election, and compare the tricks to those in Egypt.

Communism was the political realization of Marxist theory, and the Brotherhood is the political realization of Islamist theology. Egyptian Red Crescent is equivalent of the Hammer and Sickle.

So it's absolutely unrealistic that the Economist "have expected a gentler touch from the Islamist parties contesting Egypt's first free parliamentary elections in decades". And things will become worse, not better there. Just wait until Red (Crescent) Terror starts...

Thanks to them who took active participant to supplant the throne of Hosni mubaarak regime, at least Egyptian will take the taste of democracy after six decades and post-mubbarak regime will bring peace and development with the contribution of international agency and UN. Really hats off to those martyrs who had become endure to bring the democratic election.

How do you say "paper chads" and "recounts" in Egyptian?

For the Nour Islamists and many from the Brotherhood, the « dirty tricks » are highly legitimate war ruses against the infidels--pretty much everyone who doesn’t sport the same ideas, demeanor, and garb.
In case these goons win and proliferate, there is no doubt they will trump up their ultimate dirty trick: namely banishing the term “democracy” in favor of “shura” and postponing all future elections on the ground that the country is under imminent outside threat with dozens of fifth columns sapping morale inside.
Egyptians today know better --I hope --that these self-hating creatures will be unable to deliver hope; and deprived of oil revenues enjoyed by their ilk in Saudi Arabia and Iran, will need more than cheap tricks to feed and house 85 million disabused Egyptians.

Each of these tactics were practiced in 19th century, Jacksonian America:

- Accuse opponent for being "backed by Freemasons"
- "Others fingered the Coptic Church" (catholic church back then).
- "Announce that candidate "has withdrawn from the race." (happened to Morse)
- "defacing posters to illegally soliciting votes inside polling stations" (of course polling stations were often bars and what not back then in the states)

What is interesting is the implied tension between the Brotherhood and Salafists. Evokes the nasty inhouse fighting between Communists and Socialists in Western Europe during the interwar period.

Or between senators of the same political party in the United States (used to be that such senators got really hostile with each other due to fighting for the same constituencies, despite elections being staggered)

For a moment I thought the Econo was talking about the Republicans

Wow, dirty tricks in an election campaign. Who would've thunk it! Did the Democrats "register" residents living in the local cemetary back in the 60's? What about the smear campaigns waged by Dubya? In Canada the Conservatives have been using a telephone campaign to tell everyone in a riding that the NDP rep has resigned (though he hasn't). Sounds like Egypt has learned from the best and is busy applying the lessons learned.