speaking of the Egyptian Presidential election

Yesterday I was frequently caught in traffic jams while moving between different parts of Cairo, and thus had the chance to look at Egyptian candidate posters, which are plastered everywhere now. In fact, I found myself quite moved. Whatever you think of the candidates, even 18 months ago there seemed to be no chance that anything like a bona fide Presidential election could take place in this country.

A couple of weeks ago, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Amr Moussa were by far the most prevalent posters. But now the most common is Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s replacement candidate for the disqualified El-Shater (not that I like El-Shater or his Party, but it seems absurd to disqualify someone for having been recently imprisoned when the reason for their imprisonment was utterly political in the first place; but that ship has sailed).

Morsi’s posters are all over the place now, occupying strategic squares around the city. That’s no great surprise given the Brotherhood’s famous organizational prowess, and the delay in his posters appearing can surely be attributed to the fact that he was a las-minute replacement candidate.

But now other names than these three are starting to be mentioned. And even the top vote-getters in the poll were getting 11%, 10%, around that range. So there could be a surprise winner in the final tally. Just not a bad surprise, I hope.