'Down with the next Egyptian president'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/17/down-with-next-egypt-president

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The man who will be declared president of Egypt shortly will not be the president Egyptians want. We are a nation of 85 million. Fifty million of us have a vote. How many will have voted for this president?

As I write, it's looking as if the turnout for this round will settle at about 15%. Compare this to the 80% turnout in March 2011, when Scaf (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces), which had been running the country since Hosni Mubarak was deposed in 2011, put us through our first "democratic" exercise, a referendum: "Constitution first or parliamentary elections first?" The people queued, celebrated and debated – and Scaf twisted the result and cheated in its implementation to stay in power, then worked to spread chaos and division and to brutalise the nation.

Unsurprisingly, when the time came for parliamentary elections, the electorate, feeling tricked and wrong-footed, reduced its participation to about 50%. And now, clearly, the disillusionment with the mechanics of democracy under Scaf continues. This will be Scaf's proudest achievement: that it has disabused the country of any notion that the machinery of the existing state will deliver the system the majority long for.

The spectacle that we have in Egypt right now is everything that the people rejected in January last year. What Ahmad Shafiq and the generals bring is the Not Revolution.

On Saturday alone, during the last round of the elections, 35 activists from the 6th April group were detained (under the new powers granted by the minister of justice to the military two days earlier); western journalists warned that it was illegal to conduct interviews in the street; a young woman translating for a Finnish journalist was arrested; security troops went round a number of towns making inquiries about foreign Arabs who might be staying there; 22 Palestinians and Jordanians were detained; seven Syrian activists manning the protest tent in front of the Arab League offices were detained; the ministry of the interior issued warnings that armed Palestinians had been sent by Hamas from Gaza to commit acts of terror in Egypt; the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, wrote that Friday's rockets "were launched after a request by senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt". Xenophobia, division, fear of the Palestinians (on the "they want to lead us into war" ticket) are all being stoked.

To what end? Which candidate are the powers really favouring? Several polling stations announced they had found ballot books already marked in favour of the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, then it was leaked that the forgeries had been traced to the state printers who produce the ballots. Later, a video was leaked of Shafiq in an interview, slurring his words and saying: "When I'm in the company of men like this, I see something wrong – I say it – but when I go into the cupboard, I have to, or I have to also when I'm in the company – I show the manly bit of me …"

Confused? Well, here's some more: The minister of the interior says that groups of Palestinians are about to commit acts of terror with weapons they stole from the Egyptian police on 28 January 2011. He also says civilians will dress in police and army uniforms to commit acts of terror.

Right now, it seems that the coalition of the military, the power-brokers of the old regime and their foreign friends think they've won the battle for Egypt. They talk of the nonsense of the revolution being over – the interior ministry says that once the president is declared it will not tolerate protests, and stands ready to deal with them. But a tweet at 11.30pm last Thursday said: "Intermission for the elections, then we continue the revolution."

The revolution will continue because neither the old regime nor the Islamist trend in its current form are going to deliver "bread, freedom, social justice". Neither of them are going to validate the sacrifices made by the 1,200 young people murdered by the regime, the 8,000 maimed, the 16,000 court-martialled. As the weekend's spectacle unfolds, thousand of young men are in military jails, many of them on hunger strike.

In the first round of presidential elections three weeks ago, fewer than five million voted for Shafiq – the old regime candidate – and also fewer than five million voted for Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate. Around 12 million voted for the progressive, secular trend in the revolution – but that didn't count because that vote was divided between five candidates. The progressives had done what they do best: failed to come together and make common cause against a known and clear enemy.

The people have, at every turn, done the right thing. They have taken to the streets when the cause has been theirs, they've stayed away when it's been manufactured. They've been brave and resilient and resourceful. They have learned lessons. They voted the Brotherhood into parliament, and when they performed abysmally they withheld 50% of their vote from the Brotherhood's presidential candidate. They are demanding and trying to push forward effective, unified, progressive representatives who can turn their courage into political gains. Most important, they have taken their revolution to their factories, universities, towns and streets.

For the last several months, a favourite slogan has been: "Down with the next president". Amen.

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