Representing the people in the street or in the ballot box? The revolutionary coalition campaign during the 2011 Egyptian elections

ABSTRACT

The results of the 2011–12 Egyptian elections highlight the gap that exists between the ‘emotional’ and the ‘rational’ conceptions of the people and its representation. If the revolutionary moment had allowed some organizations to temporarily gain legitimacy to speak in the name of the people, these organizations have been ill-equipped to compete within the existing structure of the social cleavages. This article examines the electoral system, the lack of resources at the disposal of the revolutionaries, the polarization of the political field around the religious issue, and the difficulties involved in conciliating between the electoral campaign and street activism.

KEYWORDS:

• People
• representation
• revolution
• electoral sociology
• election
• Egypt
• social cleavages
• 2011
• electoral system

Acknowledgments

The fieldwork upon which this article is based was supported by the “Région Rhône-Alpes” (France) under the “Explora Pro” programme. The author wishes to thank also its former institution of affiliation, the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which provided him with proof-reading services for the first draft of this article, and the CEDEJ (USR 3123), which was his host institution at that time.

The last revisions of the manuscript have been done with the financial support of the ERC funded project (convention No. 695674): “Political and socio-institutional change in North Africa. Competition of models and diversity of trajectories” (TARICA), and the logistical support of the CNRS (Ladyss, UMR 7533), to which the author is currently affiliated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Pro-military, old regime and Islamist forces agreed to support the constitutional text, submitted to the referendum of 19 March 2011, that set out the main stages of the political transition. Liberal and revolutionary forces opposed this roadmap, arguing that the transition process should be allowed more time, and that the planned steps should be reversed (that is, that a constitution should be written before the election of a Parliament).

2. This point is closely related to the previous one, the hierarchy of social cleavages having been shaped at least partially by the distribution of resources by the old regime. Indeed, state control of workers unions (and also to a lesser extent of professional and student unions) helps to explain the weakness of the Left, while the relative autonomy left to the Islamist religious and charity organizations, and to the liberals (at least to the members of the Wafd party), under Mubarak played a major role in their electoral successes following the revolution (Resta, 2018).

3. In contrast, it is worth noting that Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda, pushed for the adoption of a full PR system in his country in 2011, in order to avoid his own party dominating the Parliament, and to favour the formation of a governmental coalition bringing together Islamist and secular forces (Stepan, 2018).

4. Actually, Sarah Ben Néfissa and Alâ Al-dîn Arafat noted a similar phenomenon concerning the 1987 elections, the only previous elections organized under a mixed system in this country. However, they did not develop the argument (Ben Néfissa & Arafat, 2005, p. 142).

5. As a matter of fact, the Higher Constitutional Court dissolved the elected Assembly on 14 June 2012, because of the alleged unfairness of this system towards independent candidates. In particular, the court objected to the fact that party members could stand in the election as individual candidates for the seats allocated by the SMD system, giving them an unfair advantage over independent candidates. It is interesting to observe that the Egyptian constitutional judge considered the local notables to be at least as legitimate as the political parties in potential representatives of the popular will. This conception is commonly shared by many institutional players in Egypt, and this may explain why, in the new political context born from the ousting of President Muhammad Morsi on 3 July 2013, the committee of ten experts appointed to propose amendments to the 2012 Constitution suggested a move back to a full SMD system for subsequent parliamentary elections. Eventually, the 2015 parliamentary elections were organized again through a mixed electoral system, but with a higher share of SMD seats (80 per cent). Consequently, most of the MPs elected during this election were independent candidates (circa 60 per cent).

6. For example, the TV anchor Gamila Ismail in Cairo Central. Some of these independent revolutionary candidates were elected to Parliament: such as Amru El-Chobaki in Dokki, and Amr Hamzawi in Heliopolis (Sabaseviciute, 2013).

7. The electoral programme of the revolutionary coalition (in Arabic) can be downloaded from the following link: https://thawramostamera.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/program1.pdf

8. But one should add the leader of the Freedom Egypt Party, Amr Hamzawi, who registered as an independent and was elected to an individual seat in Heliopolis (Sabaseviciute, 2013). Among the elected members of the revolutionary coalition, most of them (7) were members of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party. This is probably a side effect of the constitutional disposition stipulating that at least half of the MPs should be workers or peasants. As was the case with the other parties and coalitions, the Revolutionary Coalition lists were usually headed up by a member emanating from the other social categories. But, when eligible, the revolutionary lists were ranked last, and then, in order to fill the quota, the second member of the list (who had to be a worker or peasant if none of them had taken up the first position) was elected to Parliament instead of the head of the list.

9. Nevertheless, the ex-NDP trade-unionist became a candidate of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party for a single-member seat.

10. ‘Al-shughl al-thawrī’, to quote an official of ‘The Revolution Continues’ campaign in Tanta.

11. This repertoire of action was born as a result of the merging of two previously existing repertoires: the ‘civil-democratic’ repertoire (De Smet, 2014) and the ‘workers’ repertoire. In this regard, this repertoire participated in the construction of a unified though pluralist people, since it symbolized the union of young graduate activists and the working class.