On Monday morning, most Egyptians were glued to their television screens. But while they watched the proceedings of the second session in the trial of the man who ruled their country for three uninterrupted decades until six months ago – transmitted live – representatives of political groups of every stripe were busy redrawing the political battle lines in anticipation of the national election scheduled for November. Somehow, at least as far as political forces were concerned, Mubarak's trial seemed to matter less this time than it did during the opening session on 3 August, when scepticism regarding whether or not he would be brought to the courtroom was rife. Here he was again, again in a hospital bed, looking even more standoffish than during his first appearance, spending most of the time with his eyes wide shut as if he didn't care about the outcome. Yet, in the middle of “Red August” the trial has already been put on the backburner, to the extent that the court's decision no longer to transmit the trial's proceedings was greeted with a sigh of relief in many quarters. Egyptians felt that it was time to move on from the Mubarak drama, now that they can rest assured that he “really” is being tried, something that had formed the core demand of the myriad protestors filling Tahrir Square over many weeks. By shifting attention away from the trial and concentrating instead on a no less intense drama – that of who now gets to rule Egypt – the political activists were one step ahead of the rest of the nation. The outcome of this round in the political game will depend on the performances of the key players, especially that of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the council of ministers, on the one hand, and the various Islamist and secularist forces, on the other. New political battle lines were already being drawn up last Monday, which saw the convening of an important meeting to launch a new electoral alliance under the name of the Egyptian Bloc. This coalition, announced at a press conference held at the Press Syndicate, consists of 14 political groups, including five political parties, two older ones and three newly formed ones. The latter three are all liberal parties, while the former two are the liberal Democratic Front Party and the left-leaning Tagammu Party. Other than these five parties, the coalition also includes five other parties that are still being set up (two socialist and one communist) and four other political groupings. Some of the more-established parties in the Egyptian Bloc – and yes there are also “less-established” parties – had been members of an earlier coalition called the Democratic Coalition, formed under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood. At its inception, the Democratic Coalition had boasted the membership of 28 political groups, top among them the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the liberal Wafd Party. One might have assumed that the parties participating in the newly formed Egyptian Bloc would have pulled out of the Democratic Coalition, though somewhat miraculously we were told that the Democratic Coalition now comprises 34 parties. Confusion exists regarding who is in and who is out. To give one example, some leading members of the Wafd Party, still in coalition with the Freedom and Justice Party, are also members of the Egyptian Bloc. To confuse matters further, both the Brotherhood and its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, are leading members of a third coalition made up of 14 different Islamist groups, including various Salafist and Azharite groupings, called the Coalition of Islamist Forces. Meanwhile, on the other side of the political divide there is the ruling SCAF and the cabinet of prime minister Essam Sharaf, reshuffled in July in order to replace, among others, the much-hated deputy prime minister in charge of initiating national dialogue on the political future of the country with another deputy prime minister engaged in formulating constitutional guidelines, which will be issued soon by the SCAF in a planned constitutional declaration. However, it is not yet clear whether this new constitutional declaration will replace or amend the previous declaration, which went into effect on 30 March. As I noted in an earlier column, for three months following the 30 March constitutional declaration the whole country seemed to be trapped in a time loop, in which one woke up each morning to read the same arguments regarding whether drafting a new constitution should precede the national elections or whether things should happen the other way round. Last month, this vicious circle seemed about to be broken when the secularists agreed to drop their demands for constitution-making first in an attempt to reach an agreement with the Brotherhood, which had argued that the will of the 77 per cent of voters that had voted for elections first should be respected. Nevertheless, various documents containing guidelines on what should be included in the new constitution were being drafted by different groups, including by two presidential hopefuls and Al-Azhar. Nobody knew exactly by what mechanism such guidelines could be made binding, until the new deputy prime minister began incorporating the various suggestions into one official document, which, we were told, might then constitute a new constitutional declaration. It was at this point, this week to be precise, that all hell broke loose once more. Yesterday, the Coalition of Islamist Forces issued a strongly-worded statement saying that any such document would represent a violation of democratic principles and indicate clear bias on the part of the ruling powers, favouring one party (read secularist) over the other. As I write this column, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar has invited the different political forces to meet in order to discuss the document prepared earlier by Al-Azhar and, it is hoped, reach consensus on principles to be adopted by all. Meanwhile, the coordinating committee of the Democratic Coalition is the one group that does not seem to be in any great hurry. Its chairman, also the president of the Wafd, said that it would discuss the issue next week. Some observers think that this is the prelude to the Wafd's announcing its withdrawal from the Coalition, leaving the Brotherhood and the other Islamist forces to fend for themselves if a clash with the ruling SCAF takes place. The Egyptian Bloc, on the other hand, warned yesterday of the threat of the country's falling prey to the dictatorship of a minority (read the Brotherhood). Mamdouh Hamza, a leading member of the Bloc, called on the SCAF to hold a referendum on the constitutional guidelines contained in the document prepared by the deputy prime minister. Again, it's not clear whether this call for another referendum will affect the convening of the national elections scheduled for next November. At the moment, the constitutional declaration issued by the SCAF on 30 March has committed itself to this date, but if, as the SCAF has announced, a new constitutional declaration is to be issued soon, perhaps there will be no elections in November after all. Where does that leave us? Possibly back at square one.
