Flash: What, Me Pessimistic? Egyptian Election Outcome is Worse... (Barry Rubin The Prophet)

Rubin Reports ^ | 12/01/2011 | Barry Rubin

[goldstategop]

Since last February I have predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood would win elections in Egypt. People have thought me very pessimistic. Now the votes are starting to come in and…it’s much worse than I thought. But my prediction that the Brotherhood and the other Islamists would gain a slight majority seems to have been fulfilled and then some. According to most reports the Brotherhood is scoring at just below 40 percent all by itself.

Why worse? For two reasons:

First, the votes we now have come from the most urban areas of the country. If there are Facebook sophisticates they’re going to be in Cairo and Alexandria. If the moderates do that bad in the big cities, what’s going to happen in the villages up the Nile? If the fascist party came in first in some European countries Social Democratic districts you know you are in trouble.

The Brotherhood came in first in Cairo and Alexandria. Think about that. Of course there are millions of migrants from rural areas in those places but that’s also where the middle class, such as it is, lives.

Second, the moderate parties didn’t even come in second they came in third or close to it. The Salafists—that is people who are even more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood—came in second. That they did that well is a surprise. That they did that well without bumping the Brotherhood down a notch is really shocking.

Estimates for the Justice Party, the Facebook kids of January are getting 5 to 10 percent. Even together with the other two main moderate parties that means the liberals won’t be able to block anything. Already the Brotherhood is tasting blood and talking about pressing the army junta to accelerate the turnover of power.

It’s hard to see, though that there can be any such transfer of power. The voting is far from finished and will be going on for about three months more, followed by a presidential election. Oh, yes, the results so far suggest that the Islamists will also win the presidency.

That’s when the fun really starts. President Barack Obama is going to face a challenge he is incapable of meeting since he doesn’t even understand what’s going on. He’s like a man who has been told that a ferocious lion is really a playful kitten and then tries to feed it by hand.

Or, to switch metaphors in the middle of the stream of thought, perhaps Dr. Frankenstein is a more apt image:

“`When younger,’” said he, `I believed myself destined for some great enterprise….I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.’” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

For the purposes of this election, Egypt has been divided into three sections and each section will have a second round. I predict the moderates will fail to work together and that the Islamists will thus end up doing even better than it seems now.

The Wall Street Journal correspondent is saying that the Salafists will push the Brotherhood further to the “right” and that’s a very sensible point. Why should the Brotherhood even pretend to be moderate when the people have spoken and they want Sharia with cherries on top.

So the Islamists won and the election was fair. Should we feel good that democracy has functioned and that the people are getting what they want?

Or should we feel bad that the people want a repressive dictatorship, the repression of women, the suppression of Christians, conflict with Israel, hatred of the West, and the freezing of Egyptian society into a straitjacket that can only lead to continue poverty and increasing suffering?

As the vote count becomes clearer, I’ll be refining my analysis but now we know: This is what [Egyptian] democracy looks like.

[goldstategop]

Barry Rubin the prophet. He's been writing and warning about this since February to no avail. The election results are actually worse since the early returns now available are from the big cities: Cairo and Alexandria. Its not a good sign. The secular and liberal parties finished a distant third, fourth, fifth and last place in their urban strongholds. More radical Islamists, Salafists finished second to the Muslim Brotherhood. And the rural villages up and down the Nile valley, which have yet to turn in their returns, will go overwhelmingly for the MB and the Salafists and together the Islamists will probably win around 60-70% of the vote when all is said and done. What then does Egyptian democracy look like? I'll leave Dr. Rubin with the last word:

"Or should we feel bad that the people want a repressive dictatorship, the repression of women, the suppression of Christians, conflict with Israel, hatred of the West, and the freezing of Egyptian society into a straitjacket that can only lead to continue poverty and increasing suffering?"

All of that is fairly predictable and the hijacking of the Arab Spring by the Islamists come as no great surprise. Egypt is set to have a more repressive dictatorship than the one that it overthrew earlier this year. Its one man, one vote, one time.

[ClearCase_guy]

Egypt has had four presidents since the 1952 revolution. In backwards order, they are: Mubarak, Sadat, Nasser, and Naguib.

I had never heard of Naguib, so I looked him up on Wikipedia:

In late 1954, however, Nasser accused Naguib of supporting the recently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and of harbouring dictatorial ambitions. A brief power struggle broke out between Naguib and Nasser for control of the military and of Egypt. Nasser ultimately won the struggle and managed to force Naguib to resign from the presidency of Egypt in November 1954.

Egypt has been struggling to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power since 1954. They just lost the struggle.

[Gene Eric]

>> President Barack Obama is going to face a challenge he is incapable of meeting since he doesn’t even understand what’s going on.

The only thing that matters is the “inspiration”.

[GoCards]

Okay can I just say really seriously you did not need to be a prophet to know what was going on really... Come on, I just live in Frisco Texas and read a lot of information and have, on my own, come to the conclusion we are in a heep of shit. just sayin....

[greene66]

I keep remembering the idiot media happily reporting, with a celebratory tone, live from Tariq Square, about this marvelous, pro-democracy movement, this grand Arab Spring, even trying to give Obama partial credit for this glorious development, and thinking... you people in the media are ABJECT FOOLS!!

Thanks for posting.

[MattinNJ]

Jewish voters voted, and will vote, for Obama. Careful what you wish for.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Meanwhile, Israel is reprogramming its nuclear missiles targets and its pilots are getting out their bombing path maps to Cairo.

Notice that Obama started all this crap with his Cairo speech years ago. Reaping what he sowed.

[Intolerant in NJ]

According to most reports the Brotherhood is scoring at just below 40 percent all by itself...won't take much intimidation and assasination to get that figure up to over 50% in the next few years - thank you Arab Spring, and all who championed the movement.....

[RipSawyer]

I would say that, metaphorically speaking, Hercules has cleaned the Augean stables and dumped the whole pile on us, that’s how big a heap of shit we are in.

[RipSawyer]

I thought the same thing. I also wondered if the idiots actually believed one word they were saying or were just parroting the official propaganda line. Could they actually be stupid enough to think there would be free and honest elections with candidates who had the good of the people in mind rather than seizing power for their own benefit? As someone who once worked for me said, you would have to go to a special school to learn to be that stupid.