Doaa El-Bey and Rasha Saad present an assessment of the results of Egypt's presidential elections and the massacre in the Syrian town of Al-Hawla Many pundits were not too surprised by the results of the first round of last week's Egyptian presidential elections in which the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate Mohamed Mursi and Ahmed Shafik of the former regime will compete in a run-off next month. Despite the paradox that nearly 15 months after the 25 January Revolution, the competition was limited to the classic arch-foes -- the regime's old guard representing the military, and suspicious Islamists, a defeat for the revolutionaries either way, Arab pundits saw it coming. In the Saudi-funded Asharq Al-Awsat Abdel-Rahman Al-Rashed wrote the result was the cause of the revolutionary youth's "own ignorance of the ABCs of the political process. This is the sole reason why they lost the majority of the popular support they garnered following their quick and astonishing ousting of the Mubarak regime." Al-Rashed explained that the youth's greatest enemy was not "the old regime conspiring against them, nor the hegemony of the Muslim Brotherhood" but their own selves. Al-Rashed however believes that Shafik's victory in the first round of the elections, while it represented a defeat for the revolutionaries, was not necessarily a defeat for the revolution. Al-Rashed cites Eastern Europe, including Russia, where some corrective revolutions have erupted to return old forces back to power. Although communism collapsed, Putin, a member of the new generation of the old Soviet system, and Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, who had been a 30-year member of the Communist Party, emerged Al-Rashed notes. Also in Asharq Al-Awsat, Tariq Al-Homayed wondered if the results of the first round is "the beginning of the Brotherhood's incapacitation?" The Muslim Brotherhood which won a sweeping victory in parliamentary elections early this year, taking 47 per cent of seats, got only 25 per cent of the votes in last week's presidential elections. According to Al-Homayed, these results show that a broad section of Egyptian society has taken the decision to thwart the Muslim Brotherhood, out of fear of the establishment of a religious state, not to mention the Brotherhood-Salafist control of the Egyptian parliament and the Brotherhood's position on the drafting of a new constitution. "What a paradox it is that the Egyptian people rose up against Mubarak after 30 years in power, whilst they are rising up against the Muslim Brotherhood today, less than one year after the Egyptian parliamentary elections," Al-Homayed wrote. In the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Abdullah Iskandar also confirms that the signs of this result had surfaced "ever since the Islamists in general achieved their great electoral victory during the legislative elections, and after the emergence of the tendency to exploit this victory to control all other institutions." In his article 'President Ahmed Shafik?' Iskandar believes that the former prime minister might have a better chance of winning. Iskandar explains that while the MB and those who support it will try to focus on the ties between candidate Shafik and the injustices committed on the domestic arena by the disbanded National Democratic Party and its monopolisation of power once again, "they will not be able to offer guarantees over the way they will manage the country's affairs, or earn Arab and international support over Egypt's former position on the regional level." "In other words, outside the Islamist movements, the MB might not find clear support in favour of its project," Iskandar concludes. Meanwhile, a shocking massacre in Syria on Friday caused widespread Arab and international rage. More than 100 people, among them 32 children under 10 years of age were killed in the town of Al-Hawla near the city of Homs. The Syrian regime denied categorically that it committed the massacre, condemned it in the strongest language as a clearly terrorist crime, and announced the establishment of a military judicial commission to investigate the tragedy. "We do not dispute that there are armed groups operating on Syrian territories to undermine the regime's security and political base equally. International observers have concluded that they have carried out killings and human rights violations," wrote Abdel-Bari Atwan in the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. "[But] if the regime is so confident in what it is saying then why does it not let a team from the UN monitors participate in these investigations so that the result will be free from any suspicions and have the credibility that refutes the accusations by the parties that want to target Syria and prepare for foreign military intervention in the country?" asked Atwan. Syria is in need of the intervention of wise men, Atwan advised. He added it is in need of both the regime and opposition "to ponder the frightening bloody stages and a sectarian civil war that will probably not leave a state to be governed by this or that party. "If the Lebanese civil war lasted more than 15 years and the Algerian one 10 years, how long will the Syrian sectarian civil war last?" Atwan asked. In its editorial, the UAE newspaper Al-Bayan wrote that "the images of massacred bodies in Syria are shocking to those who support or reject the Arab Spring alike. It is proof that security solutions alone (without a political breakthrough) will only result in more killings and devastation of the country and its people." The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan criticised the UN Security Council statement condemning the massacre and described it as "ineffective". The editorial held the Syrian regime responsible for the massacre despite official denials. It wrote the head of the UN monitors insisted the attacks involved a series of government artillery and tank shellings on the residential neighbourhood in a major violation of Kofi Anan's plan. The editorial wrote that the Security Council's only tool is verbal condemnation without taking any strict stance. "The international community must be more alert and the Arabs should find other means if the Security Council fails to protect the lives of innocent people," Al-Watan wrote.
