Egypt: Looking for a Superman

Egypt's first post-Mubarak presidential election was heading to a runoff nobody had wanted — between a Muslim Brotherhood candidate and a man of the old regime.

With most first-round votes counted in late May 2012, the Brotherhood announced that its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, had topped the poll with about 25 percent of the vote and would face former air force chief Ahmed Shafiq — Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister — in the second round on June 16 and 17. A senior judge supervising the vote, and a member of Shafiq's own campaign, confirmed the two were in the lead with counting nearly complete.

The result captured the stark rift in a nation that had been united in euphoria when Mubarak fell fifteen months earlier. Leftist Hamdeen Sabahi ran third; the Brotherhood placed him fourth behind another Islamist, Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh — a close, contested finish that official results, due the following Tuesday, would confirm or revise.

The election was a crucial step in a messy and often bloody transition to democracy, overseen by a military council that had pledged to hand power to a new president by July 1. But it had split Egyptians between those who opposed an effective return to the Mubarak era and those who feared an Islamist monopoly of ruling institutions. Shafiq's opponents had already vowed to take to the streets if he won; a Morsi victory risked worsening tensions between resurgent Islamists and the army, the self-appointed guardian of the state.

Whichever way the runoff went, the revolution's unity was gone. Egypt was choosing not its future but its least-feared past.

This article summarizes contemporaneous reporting, including the Toronto Star's May 2012 coverage of the Egyptian election.