By Mona Anis Last Monday, 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 in a hospital bed, looking even more standoffish than during his first appearance, spending most of the time with eyes wide shut, as if he didn't give a toss about the outcome. By the middle of Red August, the trial has been already consigned to the backburner, so much so that the ruling of not transmitting any more sessions was greeted in many quarters with a sigh of relief. Egyptians felt that it was time to move beyond the Mubarak drama, now that they can rest assured that he is "really" being tried, something that had formed the core demand of the myriad protestors filling Tahrir Square for many weeks. Thus by shifting attention away from the trial, concentrating instead on the no less intense drama of who gets to rule Egypt, politicians were one step ahead of the rest of the nation. The outcome of this round in the political game will depend on the performance of the key players: the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the cabinet, on one hand, and various Islamist and secularist forces on the other. New political battle lines were already being redrawn last Monday, which saw the convening of one important meeting to launch a new electoral alliance under the name of the Egyptian Bloc. This coalition, announced in a press conference held at the Press Syndicate, consists of 14 political groups including five parties, two old 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-wing Tagammu Party. Other than the five parties mentioned, the coalition includes five other parties under foundation (including two socialist and one communist) and four political groups. Some of the more established parties in the Egyptian Bloc -- and yes, there are some 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 28 political groups, top among them the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the liberal Wafd Party. Now, one would assume that the parties participating in the newly formed Egyptian Bloc have pulled out of the Democratic Coalition, though we are told that somehow, miraculously, the Democratic Coalition now comprises 34 parties. Indeed a great deal of confusion exists regarding who is in and who is out. To give one example of this confusion, some leading members of the Wafd Party, which is still in coalition with the Freedom and Justice Party, are also members of the Egyptian Bloc. To complicate matters further, both the Brotherhood and its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, are leading members of a third coalition, which comprises 14 Islamist groups, including different Salafist and Azharite societies, called the Coalition of Islamist Forces. Meanwhile, on the other side of the political divide, there exists the ruling SCAF and the cabinet of Essam Sharaf, which underwent a reshuffle in July, replacing, among other ministers, the much-hated deputy prime minister in charge of initiating a national dialogue on the political future of the country, with another deputy prime minister now engaged in formulating a document of constitutional guidelines, to be issued soon by SCAF in an intended constitutional declaration. However, it's not yet clear whether this new constitutional declaration would replace or amend the other 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 where one woke up every morning to read the same argument regarding whether constitution-making should precede the national elections or vice versa. Last month, this vicious circle seemed about to be broken, when the secularists agreed to drop the demand for constitution-making first, in an attempt to reach a consensual agreement with the Brotherhood, who argued that the popular will of the 77 per cent who voted for elections first should be respected. Nevertheless, many documents containing guidelines for what should be enshrined in the new constitution were being drafted by different groups, including two presidential hopefuls and Al-Azhar. Nobody knew exactly the mechanism by which such guidelines could be binding, until the new deputy prime minister began incorporating the various suggestions into one official document, which we were told might constitute a new constitutional declaration. It was at this point, this week to be specific, that all hell broke loose. The Coalition of Islamist Forces issued a strongly-worded statement yesterday saying that such a document represented a strong violation of democratic principles and manifested a clear bias on the part of the ruling powers, favouring one party (read secularist) over the other. As I write this column on Tuesday, the Shiekh of Al-Azhar has invited different political forces to meet tomorrow to discuss the document prepared earlier by Al-Azhar and to reach a consensus regarding the principles to be adopted by all. Meanwhile the coordinating committee for the Democratic Coalition is in no great hurry, it seems. Its chairman, also the President of the Wafd Party, said they would discuss the issue next week. Some observers think this is the prelude to the Wafd announcing its withdrawal from the coalition, leaving the brotherhood and 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 against the threat of the country falling prey to the dictatorship of a minority (read the Brotherhood). Mamdouh Hamza, a leading member of the bloc, called on SCAF to hold a referendum on the constitutional guidelines in the document prepared by the deputy prime minister. Again, it is not clear whether this call for a new referendum will affect the convening of the national election scheduled for next November. At the moment, the constitutional declaration issued by SCAF on 30 March commits itself to this date, but if as SCAF announced a new constitutional declaration is to be issued soon, then perhaps there will be no elections in November. Could it be that this leaves us back at square one.
