Doaa El-Bey looks at the outcome of the first round of parliamentary elections in Egypt and the rise of political Islam in the region All eyes were on this week's second round of the first phase of the parliamentary elections together with the selection of a new government. Al-Wafd on Tuesday had 'Gun shots in the second round'. Al-Masry Al-Youm on Tuesday wrote 'Low turnout in second round and attempts to rig the elections'. Al-Shorouk on Monday came up with 'Regime remnants vanquished in first round'. Al-Ahram on Monday blared 'Freedom and Justice Party competes with Nour Party for 32 seats' and Al-Akhbar on Tuesday headlined 'National salvation government ready'. Writers also tried to analyse the impact of the elections and the new government on the future of Egypt. Salah Montasser expected that the second round would be easier and less exciting than the first round of the first phase of the parliamentary elections. He hailed the performance of the Egyptian Bloc because it managed to find a place on the political map and represent the national liberal trend even though its parties are new, it does not have headquarters in the governorates and does not have religious leaders who persuade people to vote for it. In his regular column in the official daily Al-Ahram, Montasser also criticised the Supreme Elections Committee (SEC) whose role was limited to informing voters about where their polling station was. Meantime, he added, the head of the SEC declared the results of the first round without any details although details are needed to analyse the results. "Every day I open the website of the SEC in the hope of finding more news about the results, but I find nothing. I hope that the officials responsible would work harder to update it promptly," Montasser wrote. Abbas El-Tarabili wrote that vital national issues were lost between the results of the elections and the difficult birth of the national salvation government. He acknowledged that it was unexpected that the Islamist Salafis would win the number of seats they did "although we knew beforehand that they were much more organised than liberal powers. Besides, liberals were busy with issues like the constitution first or the parliamentary elections first and the El-Silmi document which are not that important for the low-income voter who is after food and decent housing." Amid all these issues, El-Tarabili added, the most pressing national issues like the Nile were lost. "While all the Nile Basin countries are taking action, Egypt is absent. Furthermore, we had four ministers of irrigation in the last 10 months and the fifth is coming. Instead of forming a committee in which important ministries like foreign, interior, economy and international cooperation take part, we left the issue in the hands of an employer who lacks any strategic thinking. One day we could wake up to find that the upper Nile Basin states are selling us Nile water," El-Tarabili wrote in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. The same uncertain policies are applied to the Ministry of Education: one day, El-Tarabili explained, it is one ministry, the other it is divided into three ministries -- education, higher education, and scientific research. These policies affect education in Egypt. The Ministry of Supply was also a victim of these policies. "The government of former prime minister Essam Sharaf failed and the national salvation government will also fail because they think the same way. And the citizen is the one who pays the price," El-Tarabili wrote. Mohamed Hassan El-Banna started his article by asking why Egyptians are being treated as guinea pigs. The new prime minister, Kamal El-Ganzouri, he explained, will not only be unable to save Egypt but will further bog it down in the mud. He acknowledged that El-Ganzouri had credibility but was not the right man at present because he does not know anybody younger than 30. Thus El-Banna added, the ministers that he chose were part of previous governments. The new minister of finance, for instance, was the head of the previous minister of finance Youssef Boutros Ghali's office. How is he going to save the country, he asked, when he was part of the decision-making in the previous corrupt government? "The new government will come and go without making any difference except inciting more protests and sit-ins because El-Ganzouri did not learn the lesson," El-Banna wrote in the official daily Al-Akhbar. Regarding the elections, El-Banna added that the important thing was that the people expressed their viewpoint freely. The minority has to accept the viewpoint of the majority, he summed up. Mohamed Amin cast doubt that El-Ganzouri has any additional authority because he had to consult the ruling military council several times before he chose his ministers. He could not change the minister of information, Amin wrote, before consulting the military council and the minister of agriculture before consulting the Muslim Brotherhood. He added that El-Ganzouri and other previous prime ministers never formed their governments unilaterally. The president, the People's Assembly, the Shura Council and the Intelligence agency used to put up the names and in the end the prime minister could do nothing but head the pre-selected cabinet. Now, Amin wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, El-Ganzouri talks about new ministers being sworn in by the end of this week although he did not name the ministers of information and interior. "How about proving that he has genuine power and name a minister of defence?" "El-Ganzouri proved that having authority is a myth. The ruling council did not leave him with any authority; he had to take permission before selecting the minister of information and more importantly the ministers of foreign affairs and interior. We held the elections without a government. How about keeping the status quo?." Ziad Bahaaeddin noted that sectarian escalation and involving religion in the election process were clear features of the vote. Thus, unfortunately, the elections had become an arena for sectarian division between religious and civil rule and between Muslim and Christian. The media, he added, contributed in increasing that division by airing programmes that emphasise the split. It is easy to say that the political parties were wrong when they used sectarianism to recruit more votes. But their mistakes started months earlier when they did not provide voters with clear economic and political programmes. Thus, when the election came it was easier to use the more conspicuous tool of sectarianism. While Bahaaeddin hailed the effort of the army and judges to protect the election process inside the polling stations, they left the areas around the stations for those who want to involve religion and sectarianism in election propaganda. "As a result, the first phase of the elections was fair inside the polling stations. But it witnessed widescale violations outside them: candidates used religion and sectarianism as tools to tarnish the picture of their competitors," Bahaaeddin wrote in the independent daily Al-Shorouk. He concluded by hoping that the second and third phases would have more respect for fair competition and a serious will to preserve national unity. However, Bahaaeddin shed doubt that the political parties which yearn for authority and the biggest part of the cake would put the interest of Egypt at the top of their list of priorities.
