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.