Neither Feloul nor Islamist

Revolutions create their own sense of time and periodization. An article exploring why Hamdeen Sabbahi gained such support with a minimal machine behind him ("Why Did Sabbahi - 'One of Us' - Do So Well?," Jadaliyya [and Ahram Online], May 26 2012, by Ekram Ibrahim), notes that one of his chief attributes was that he was "neither feloul [remnant]...nor Islamist. Another is titled, "In the field of feloul, Shafiq rules" (by Rana Khazbak and Heba Afify, Egypt Independent, 26/05/2012). Another blog groups the votes of Shafiq and Moussa together to map the Feloul votes (which might surprise those leftists who were strategically voting with the latter only to see his candidacy slide into fourth ("Mapping the Egyptian Presidential Election," May 26, 2012, by Eric Schewe). But returning to Sabbahi; he is neither feloul nor Islamist because he is neither the candidate of a return to the Mubarak era (Ahmed Shafiq, currently in 2nd place) nor the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate (Mohamed Mursi, currently in 1st, although official results are not released). But Sabbahi is a self-described Nasserist, obviously a position of an old, very old regime, if not the old regime. In an election in which the 57-year-old Sabbahi can lay claim to the youth vote because he is the youngest candidate, everyone will be tied to the way pre-revolutionary politics were played in one way or another. The key is what politics they stand for going forward.

When French Revolutionaries created the Ancien Régime, post facto as that what they had been rebelling against, they created opponents of the Revolution which they called the Ci-devants (the "so-called").  The ci-devants were so-called because they were former aristocrats, whose privileges and social status were abolished by the Revolution (and the night of 4 August 1789). So there were no more nobles, but the remnant remained, at least in terms of those supporting the policies similar to or even the restoration of the Old Regime.

Which brings us to the Ancien Régime, the Old Order: "isqat al-nizam," was the cry to bring down the old "regime" in Egypt. But it was, by the vagaries of language, also the call to bring down "order." It is not surprising that many voters would seek to avoid demolishing order. The feloul voters, the ci-devants, are not simply those who benefited by the Old Order, but those who fear the absence of nizam.

Egypt: Vox Pop, Vox Populi

(based on al-Ahram polls; see "Reading
the tea-leaves" for the latest)

Yesterday, I posted a shout-out to Egypt on elections (that is, they often look uninspiring until one looks at the alternatives), and hoped they would soon have their own Nate Silver. Well, I found one. Issandr El Amrani today posts a useful analysis of the Egyptian Presidential Candidates and their prospects (based, of course on pre-election polling and positioning). ("My belated take on Egypt's elections," by Issandr El Amrani, The Arabist, May 24, 2012) If Aboul Fotouh or Sabahi would fit the view of those seeking change, that seems unlikely to be the desire of more than a third of the population.

Many posts, at least in English, are similar to vox pop journalism now running on Al Jazeera, etc. (see, for example, "Egypt Votes, At Last," by Wendell Steavenson, New Yorker, May 23, 2012). My own take from one such clip were women in line who stated (through the translation) that whoever won should take care, else they would vote him out next time. The revolution is not synonymous withe the elections. Day 2 of Egypt's first post-Mubarak presidential elections continues today.

Egypt: Vox Dei, Vox Populi?

Greetings, Egyptians. Welcome to the problems and opportunities of mass democracy. The process sometimes produces the debacle of hanging chads and the hung election between Al Gore and George W. Bush; and it sometimes produces the government of Il Popolo della Libertà party led by Silvio Berlusconi. But its value and veracity is never just in one election. May you long have the joy of psephology and may you soon have your own Nate Silver.

Assad and the Schmürz

Growing up in the Seventies became a search for the offbeat, the quirky (which might explain how I can put Lene Lovich, the Mael brothers, and Tristan Tzara in the same parenthetical comment). If the strange had already entered my school days with the plays of  Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Wolfgang Borchert, outside the school walls my friends and I entertained ourselves with the likes of Boris Vian. 

The dark, comic play, The Empire Builders by Boris Vian (Les Bâtisseurs d'Empire ou le Schmürz, 1957, pub. 1959), was described by LA Weekly (commenting on one of its periodic revivals) in this way:

• "A respectable family of father, mother, daughter, and their maid, flee within the confines of their home, from a strange, unknown and terrifying Noise which pursues them as they move upward from floor to floor until they reach the attic. In each room, they find the same creature awaiting them: a dark, bandage-wrapped thing who suffers in silence as the family casually beats, whips, and pummels him." (City Garage Theater, n.d.)

Le Schmürz followed the family from room to smaller room to garret, quietly suffering beatings and various tortures, until the remnant of the family ends the play by self-defenestration, and an army of silent, bandage-wrapped personages appear. As a teenager, I presumably incompletely assumed that (1) Europeans had a lot of unresolved issues after 1945, and (2) Vian was not enamored of the bourgeois family.

Aleppo University, Thurs., 17 May 2012

But today's report that "thousands of people have taken to the streets in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo," suggest a similar shrinking scenario for Pres. Bashar al-Assad's regime.

• Syria's second city has so far not experienced the violence seen in other cities during the uprising and has remained largely loyal to the government...since protests began in March 2011. ( "'Thousands' protest in northern Syrian city of Aleppo," 18 May 2012, BBC)

All is well; Damascus is largely loyal, said the bourgeois father from his attic room.

Friending Revolution

Reading two books which grew out of Arab Spring:

• Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) and 
• Marwan Bishara, The Invisible Arab: The Promise and Peril of the Arab Revolutions (Nation Books, 2012).

(Amazon has a nice, simple interview with Mr. Ghonim.) Both works appear to be by writers who don't read books a lot. (This might apply more to Ghonim than to Bishara, but the notes from the latter cite mainly websites.) This is an observation, not a criticism. Ghonim's work is as much about social media and the synergy between education in marketing and computing and political science as it is about the Egyptian Revolution. Still, the first-person story makes the swirl of events (see this blog over the past year-plus) accessible; and provides key insights to generational shifts. And hope.