"Below Zero": Egypt's Liberals Crushed by Islamist Majority in Elections

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.albawaba.com/editorchoice/below-zero-egypts-liberals-crushed-islamist-majority-elections-407918

Published January 5th, 2012 - 13:59 GMT via SyndiGate.info

The liberal groups that were the vanguard of last year's protests are facing the challenge of remaining relevant in a political future that will be dominated by Islamist groups after voting for lower house of parliament ended yesterday.

"We are going to start not from scratch, but from below zero," said Ahmed Said, the head of the liberal alliance known as the Egypt Bloc and winner of a parliamentary seat in Cairo.

"Unfortunately, we now see a much larger right-wing majority in the parliament. There is going to be a lot of conflict on issues like the constitution."

The elections chronicled the abrupt reversal of fortune for the youth groups and liberal political movements that took to the streets on January 25 last year to demand the end of the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

[MH1]

1. This was predictable and predicted.

But countries get to choose their own rulers.

[gateley]

2. It sounds like, as in the US, the extremists are the ones with the money and the force.

[xchrom]

3. Du rec. Nt

[riverwalker]

4. lessons of Tahrir

Blogger "Sandmonkey" (if you remember him, Rachel Maddow interviewed him a couple of times) writes poignantly about the state of things. He ran for a seat in parliament.

http://www.sandmonkey.org/

[David__77]

5. The constitutional debate will not even involve the so-called liberals.

It will involve the Salafists and the MB. And I'm not sure it matters. Egypt has a somewhat liberal constitution now, nominally. But it's force that matters in the end. Egypt's status as an Islamic state will be greatly consolidated in the period ahead, although religious minorities may even get allotted parliament seats, as in Iran.