Election mood settles on Egypt at the backdrop of political polarisation, violence, security vacuum but also the upbeat political song of the iconic Ahmed Adaweya, writes Amira Howeidy The political climate in revolutionary Egypt should be quite dispiriting. Eleven days have passed since the 9 October massacre in front of the state TV building in Maspiro where 25 -- mostly Christian Copts -- died after clashes with both military and riot police and the angry backlash has yet to subside. The tragedy and its repercussions clearly pointing to both the military and the government's shortcomings in steering the interim period are anything but good indicators for Egypt's aspired transition to democracy. (Military spokesmen said that soldiers were also killed in the clashes, but wouldn't reveal information death toll). Meanwhile, almost every political coalition that was formed for electoral purposes and hailed by the media appears to have collapsed completely. Clearly disarrayed, most political parties failed to present the body that's overseeing the elections, with the electoral lists they've fought so hard to include in the voting system. After intense debating with Egypt's de facto rulers in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), a chorus of political parties which attempted to pressure for an exclusively list based system, were compelled to accept a mixed formula: two thirds party list and one third individual candidacy. But when nomination for the elections started on 12 October to end 18 October, hardly any political party -- let alone coalition -- managed to submit any lists as the days went by. This compelled the Election Committee overseeing the vote to extend their deadline to 22 October. Yet as Al-Ahram Weekly was going to press on Wednesday the main political parties had yet to submit their lists. Ironically, some key advocates of the exclusive party list system, like political analyst Amr Hamzawy are running as individual candidates. Hamzawy who is contesting the elections for the first time opted for the middle class district and constituency of Heliopolis in east Cairo. He was also one of the key symbols of the secular Egyptian Block coalition which was formed last August to compete against the Islamists. Not only did Hamzawy quit his own party -- Egypt Freedom -- which joined the block, the Egyptian Block itself has collapsed as differences between its various parties proved impossible for the survival of a secular alliance. Similarly, the Democratic Coalition which boasted the membership of over 30 political parties and groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party (FJP), was first to tumble down. The rifts between FJP and the liberal Wafd over prioritising candidates on the coalition electoral lists forced the latter to break away from the coalition and contest the elections on its own. Even the various Salafi parties which appeared at complete harmony with the FJP broke away from the Democratic Coalition which is practically left with the FJP -- together with small parties -- as its main backbone and seem to be willing to compete against the Brotherhood's candidates. "Everybody is running against everybody," Mustafa El-Naggar, 31, of the Al-Adl (Justice) Party, which was formed after the revolution, told Al-Ahram Weekly. El-Naggar who's running in Nasr City constituency (adjacent to Heliopolis) whose party was amongst the political forces fighting for an all party list voting system, admits that they're now "stuck". "There was no realistic vision of how the coalitions were going to devise lists in agreement and now it's a compete disaster," he said. Many political parties are reportedly adding members of the former ruling (now dissolved) National Democratic Party (NDP) to their lists especially in Upper Egypt where tribalism dominates the tradition of voting and where large, affluent families are classically members of the ruling party, be it NDP under Hosni Mubarak's rule or the Socialist Union before that. These figures in both Upper and the Delta governorates are viewed as " fulul " or remnants of Mubarak's regime which the new and old political parties ideally want to avoid in their election calculations, but may not be able to. Says El-Naggar: "the scene ahead of the first parliament to be elected in the revolution is cinematic and completely dramatic." But despite the confusion that marks the entire electoral process with its convoluted mixed voting system and the failure of the political parties to live up to their own plans, the prospect of approaching elections has, against all odds, invoked a sense of enthusiasm and possibility for real change. Not only are the vast majority of Egyptian voters theoretically going to choose their MPs for the first time in history come election day, countless numbers of candidates from across the political spectrum, be it Salafi women clad in all-black niqab, or younger names associated with the revolution such as Mahmoud Salem better known as "Sandmonkey the blogger" and human rights activists- are running for the first time as well. But if the political elite and values of the ancien regime are failing the people, the revolution is not. And just as people initiatives emerged out of nowhere after Mubarak's ouster to paint sidewalks or sweep the streets, so did the king of popular ( shaabi ) music Ahmed Adaweya, 66, who suddenly entered the scene with his hit song " Al-Ghayeb maloush nayeb '"(If you're absent, you wont have an MP) which is about voting. The three-minute song which slams the "old ways" of vote buying and corruption was released only days after nomination for the parliament opened. After a long two-decade long hiatus Adaweya who's easily the 1970-80s pop icon was persuaded to perform his first political song through an initiative from four upper middle-class women in Maadi who call themselves "Egyptian Awakening". After months of hard work the selfless group which wants to raise political awareness managed to pull the song together and have it released online on the 15th. Adaweya and his music team did it free of charge. The women, Sahar El-Arishy, May Ellethy, Nadine Azmi and Mariam El-Masri, all in their 40s and mothers, say they want their content to reach across the nation. "We don't want to end up being stars, the less visible we are the better. It's our content that matters," said El-Arishy, who has a cooperate communications firm. Observers grappling with the developments believe that the oxymoronic situation of chaos and optimism is characteristic of the transition. "All the political forces formed their action plans based on the maps of the old regime," Heba Raouf Ezzat who lectures on political theory in Cairo University told the Weekly. Now this is clashing with the new realities on the ground "where we are left with no choice but to move forward despite everything towards the unpredictable," she said.
