100 years of political division continues to affect Egypt

The political division in modern Egypt is nothing new. It has its roots in the national movement which grew from the 1919 revolution, or even before it. The division intensified between the National Party founded by Mustafa Kamel and the Wafd Party, in terms of the methodology used to confront the British occupation and interaction with the political process, to the point where students affiliated with the National Party attempted to assassinate Wafd leader Saad Zaghloul, an incident that he did not discuss in his memoirs. It was possibly among their 100 missing pages.

Nevertheless, that attempt tells us that the use of assassination as a political tool was not invented by the Islamists, as the Sisi regime in Egypt has claimed. It preceded the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood, as the National Party used it to try to liquidate British officers, as well as national leaders such as Zaghloul. Among the political groups exiled during the period of the British occupation, the political division reached the point where accusations of treason were traded, cooperation with the British was common and opponents were spied on abroad. This is similar to what happens today to the opposition in exile since the 2013 military coup.

The history of Egypt’s political division cannot be covered in a few hundred words. However, I want to point out that it is one of the decisive factors that many have neglected to address when looking at the failure of politics in Egypt in different periods. It is also evidence of the failure of political groups to manage their differences, even during the great moments of change, like the 1919 and 2011 revolutions, for example. The spectre of division prevailed over everyone and dominated the political arena.

In the period leading up to the January Revolution in 2011 there was a margin of freedom that allowed the actors to mobilise and play a role in political life. The political forces at the time were characterised by a plurality of political movements, such as the Egyptian Movement for Change (Kifaya), and other youth movements that branched out afterwards. There were political parties with nationalist and leftist ideology, liberal parties and the ruling National Democratic Party. Then there was the Muslim Brotherhood, which represented the Islamic trend, and the Wasat Party, the only political party with an Islamic reference that represented the centre of the political spectrum. This is in addition to the human rights organisations and the extension of neoliberalism that they represented.

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While the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated the student movement, leftist movements dominated the labour movement and human rights organisations. A year before the start of the revolution, the National Association for Change was formed with the emergence of Mohamed ElBaradei as a potential rival and alternative to Hosni Mubarak in the presidential election. The association formed an alliance of national forces, from the far right to the far left, with the exception of public figures of national authority, who did not join the alliance for reasons related to political division, which turned into a personal dispute.

The main goals of the new alliance — the National Assembly — were to work towards a political system based on democracy and social justice. From this standpoint, the National Association for Change formulated seven demands to ensure basic guarantees for free and fair elections inclusive of all Egyptians, with equal opportunities in both legislative and presidential elections. They are guarantees and procedures demanded by broad groups of Egyptian society over many years. The political forces did not go further than to formulate a plan for the post-Mubarak period or to try to discuss the position of the army in the political process in Egypt, a role that appeared strongly later in the transitional period and after it. In other words, the absence of a political project played a major role in deepening the polarisation after the fall of Mubarak. This point is considered to be one of the most important shortfalls in the inability of these forces to formulate a political project to which everyone feels they can contribute.

These forces shared two main factors in the pre-uprising period: agreement on Mubarak’s departure from power, and the political division. The latter was not as intense as it is now, but its presence was clear. However, agreeing on the goal of removing Mubarak from power delayed the deepening of this division and its current pre-eminence. With the outbreak of the revolution, the counter-revolution across the region began to make preparations to besiege this popular movement, and exploit areas of difference and division in order to infiltrate and defeat the uprising. New political forces came on the scene intending to engage in an experiment and establish political parties. There was noticeable interest in party work among several social groups, especially the middle class. As a result, many political groupings and coalitions were formed, along with new parties. The former were characterised by the lack of organisation, political project or popular base. Their temporary presence contributed to making the political division worse between groups of young people. In any case, without a strong support base, they didn’t last long.

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As usual, the regime managed to use this political division to its advantage, in order to seize the institutions of power and ward off any initiative among the civilian forces to build future alliances to overcome this division, or even agree on a unified vision that threatens the regime’s existence and future. There was also a well-used regime strategy to bide its time to gain itself more space while counting on the people’s patience and endurance. This strategy became more prominent during the January Revolution.

With the current and increasing economic deterioration, along with the decline of Egyptian politics and totalitarian failures on several levels, the regime has become aware that it has lost whatever popularity it had in the immediate aftermath of the coup. It has no other solution to this other than to impose more oppression, which expresses its real crisis. Every time that there is any movement or political debate, the political division emerges fiercer than before, thus weakening any chance of future consensus or agreement on a specific vision as a starting point for change. Instead, the matter has got out of hand and the personal targeting of those with different political views has become the means by which political forces deal with each other. The question now is how can these political forces learn from the mistakes of the past and be able to manage the political division, and transform it into a political dispute that can be managed easily and rationalised?

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on 27 February 2021

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.