Amr Mousa was a leading candidate for president with about 6 months to go before the elections. The voters ultimately, however, chose two very different candidates: the ‘regime’ candidate, Ahmed Shafik and the Islamist candidate, Mohammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. Given the overthrow of the Mubarak regime and the surprising (to me, at least) neutrality of the military leadership at the time, I would have expected a centrist candidate to show better. What happened?

Based on conversations with friends and colleagues in Egypt (Cairo primarily) who are knowledgeable of the campaign strategies of various candidates (mostly centrist), a variety of factors were involved. As you might expect, some were about what the Mousa campaign did or didn’t do and others were about their rivals’ actions as well as the macro situation in Egypt after the overthrow of an authoritarian government. With respect to Mousa campaign, they could have done a better job of branding themselves to the voting public. They didn’t create a language or a brand for the centrist candidates as a group – the liberal/civil society brand – and didn’t do enough to prevent the overall narrative in the campaign from polarizing to ‘regime’ candidates vs. Islamist candidates. They also let those who truly occupied those poles (e.g., SCAF) discredit those who took up the voice of the revolution like Amr Mousa had done. They needed to do a better job of setting the terms of the debate. In the end, the voice of the revolution splintered among the centrist candidates.

Beyond that, there were structural factors at work. The overall security situation deteriorated. There were relatively more car thefts and robberies than Egyptians were used to since the end of the Mubarak regime. It is not that they were high on an absolute level but they were high relative to their prior experience. Some suggest that this permissive environment was intentional on the part of the SCAF and its allies but the level of civil disorder Egyptians experienced was not unusual in the wake of the collapse of a long-standing authoritarian regime. This logically helped the law and order candidate, Shafik, in that the hard line message played well to Egyptian equivalent of the ‘silent majority’ (Hizb Khadana or the ‘party of the couch’). The other structural reason was the fuel crisis. There were scarcities of petrol for auto use and, perhaps more significantly, butane for use in cooking by those living in informal housing. Many Egyptians live in informal housing and the political impact of the fuel crisis was reflected in the relative decline of appeal of centrist candidates as a group. You tend to naturally care less about higher level needs like the freedoms of individual rights when the basics are not assured.

The sense I get from my friends and colleagues is cautious optimism. SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood will joust with each other for control of the legislative and executive powers of government while the centrist politicians regroup and organize for future elections. The fact that there is a belief that future elections will be held is, in itself, a positive sign. My colleagues all agree that trying times are ahead but that there is no returning to the Nasserist model of government that derailed Egypt in the 1950s.