The election is over, the casualties have been counted and the dust settled. The Parliament is now convened with 88 MB parliamentarians, which means they have more then enough votes to back an independent nominee in the next presidential elections, while none of the actual opposition parties have enough to back one of their own. The trend in the elections shows that the majority of people who vote for the MB aren't MB sympathizers as much as they are NDP haters, who wanted to vote against the NDP and therefore backed its biggest opposition group. It's like our own version of the ABB movement.
This isn't good news for the NDP, because the moment the next presidential election comes, they will have a 2 man race between their nominee (Mubarak Jr.) and the MB's nominee, and they can't want that. Gamal Mubarak is hated to the degree that people will vote for the MB candidate just so he wouldn't become our next President, and the NDP knows this. They know that in order for Jimmy to have a chance in hell the MB need to be neutralized and not have a candidate, which we all know is improbable as a Christian becoming the next President of Egypt. Even dissolving the parliament and having new elections won't guarantee that the MB won't get enough seats again, especially that the Egyptian people showed that they will brave anything to vote, and the Judges are showing that they won't just do what the government tells them anymore, which means that voter fraud won't go smoothly at all. There needs to be a solution that allows people to vote, but would prevent the MB from fielding candidates and would get rid of them and their influence in this parliament. And no, arresting the MB head figures won't do, because the MB could field nobodies and those nobodies would win just because they are the MB candidates. This has to be legal and fair solution that would gain wide-ranged support from our intelligentsia.
Luckily for them, such a solution does exist after all: Voting by candidate lists.
For those of you unfamiliar with such a process, this is how it goes: Every party fields a list of candidates equal to the number of the seats in the Parliament, with usually the most prominent or important names placed at the top of the list. The Egyptian voters will go and vote for the list that has names that they approve off, and based on the percentages each list gets of the vote, an equal percentage of the seats in the parliament gets distributed to the respective parties and handed out in ascending order: i.e. if they get 22 seats, the first 22 names get those seats, if they get 100 seats, the first 100 names get seats and so on. Basically you vote for the party you believe in instead of the representative you like. I believe this is the way that Iraq and Israel run their elections as well. Anyway...
Well, you may ask, how will that limit the MB exactly?
Well... They don't have a party, therefore they can't have their own list of candidates. There maybe an independent list, but who is going to manage it? Who will decide which name goes first? In parties the election committee would decide that, but there is no such a thing for an independent list. Unless the MB forms a party (which the government won't allow) or joins an existing party (which is unlikely because there isn't a party that likes their ideology or are ready to be taken over by the MB. Not to mention the government can then freeze the party from political activity), they won't be able to play at all. And it would be all legal and would have the support of the opposition parties, because now, that the MB is neutralized, they have a shot of getting more seats and having more Power, and maybe even get a shot at the presidential elections again. The NDP would like that too, because most of those parties are out of touch with the Egyptian voter and have very little street presence, unlike the MB.
So how would that happen exactly? Well, the process already started. First of all, you have one of your stooges-preferably not an NDP MP- start a motion for something the MB would have to support but didn't intend to bring it up now for their own political interests of seeming moderate, like Al Ghad defecter MP Ragab Hellal Hemaydah's recent proposal to ban the sale of alcohol in Egypt since "it is against the Sharia and the sharia is the basis of the constitution". This is something the MB would not be able to weasel out of, because they are supposedly the protectors of the Sharia and if they don't support it you could call them Hypocrites for it; And, on the other hand, if they do support it, you can then claim: "Hey, look, the moment they have power they show their true colors, and it looks like the Taliban". Their choice would either be looking like extremists or looking like Hypocrites and either way it's a lose-lose situation for the MB and their image will be tarnished one way or another.
After tarnishing their image, you move to proposing a law that would change the electoral system in Egypt from an elected representative one to that of a candidate list one. The opposition parties would hail the decision as the greatest breakthrough in Egyptian politics and another move towards democracy, the MB would of course object, but since the NDP has a 2/3 majority the MB would be helpless to stop it. After the law passes, the President would dissolve the parliament and call for a new parliamentary election, this time without MB candidates. Since the majority of the other parties are disorganized and lack funding, the NDP list would probably win most seats, and give the Egyptian people a multi-party presidential elections that will look like a circus once again. The NDP and Gamal win, the impotent Opposition parties win, and the secularists and the Christians would finally breathe a temporary sigh of relief since the Big Bad Brotherhood is now out of the picture, again. The losers, of course, would be the MB and the Egyptian people, who may end up feeling that the only way to change the system would have to be a violent one and we are back to the days of the early 90's once again and the emergency laws will never ever get revoked. So, basically, Egypt and democracy will end up being the greatest losers after all. But that doesn't matter, since the NDP and Gamal will win, and a victory for Gamal is a victory for Democracy, right?
Riiight!
Sigh...
