Editorial: Brotherhood victory Sunday, 22 January 2012 03:19

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) of Brotherhood in Egypt has won a sweeping victory in the country’s parliamentary election, taking 47 percent of the seats in the new assembly. The hardline Islamist Al-Nur party is the assembly’s second largest bloc, with 29 percent of the seats won on party lists.  The liberal Wafd party came in third and the Egyptian Bloc coalition came in fourth. Elections for parliament’s upper house are set for February. The two-chambers will then choose a 100-member body to write a new constitution. A new president is expected to be elected by June.

There is no doubt that Egypt will be ruled by the Brotherhood, and the focus now must shift to other important issues like the policies which the moderate Islamists will follow, how the transition of power will be carried out and the future role of the military which is determined to remain a dominant force in the country’s politics.

Even as the country goes through the complex election process, there is a genuine concern among many Egyptians that the revolution hasn’t achieved its objectives. While the Brotherhood seems to be focusing on the election process, saying that elections will lead to a peaceful transition of power to civilians, the secularists and revolutionaries differ. They are worried about the military consolidating its hold on power, about the remnants of the Mubarak regime torpedoing the reform process, and the Brotherhood colluding with the military in the name of stability to thwart further action by the revolutionaries.

What the country needs today is cooperation between Islamist parties, secularists and revolutionaries to wrest power from the military and make them keep their promises. Thousands of Egyptians are being tried in military courts and the emergency law is still in place. The murderers of the revolution’s martyrs have not been sentenced. Protesters continue to be detained, tortured and even killed. The dreaded interior ministry is yet to be restructured and the government departments are yet to be cleansed of the corrupt elements from the Mubarak regime.

The Arab world expected Egypt to become a model Arab spring state by evolving a system that can be emulated, but the events in the country haven’t given much hope. The military has been very unwilling to cede power and has adopted all obstructionist tactics and only when the protesters took to the squares repeatedly they moved to satisfy them.

Despite the deep differences that exist between the military and the political parties on the one hand and the revolutionaries and the Brotherhood on the other, the only way to narrow their differences and work for a stable Egypt is dialogue. The army must hand over power, and Brotherhood must listen to the secularists and the revolutionaries.