Without coordination, two-thirds of the voters had silently sent a resounding message to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi by refraining from participating in the first round of the parliamentary elections despite his appeal on October 16 and 18. And they are now sending the same message regarding the second round.
In order to measure the decline in Sisi’s popularity, we just need to recall the day the man asked the Egyptian people on June 30, 2013 to give him the mandate to fight terrorism, when about 30 million people responded to his appeal.
But when he appealed to them again, after less than two years, to participate in the parliamentary elections, only 15 million responded, which was barely 26 percent of the eligible voters.
The question that Sisi and his men should ask themselves is why two-thirds of the voters turned their backs on him, particularly the young?
The overwhelming vote in the 2015 parliamentary elections is boycott. It is the muffled vote in the chests of those young people (18-40 years) whom sociologists describe as being half of the present and all of the future.
So, if half of the present turns its back on Sisi, should he not try to keep all of the future, him being a former intelligence man?
Modern history tells us that fascism rises when people are reluctant to participate in politics.
Fascism in Latin means an ax surrounded by a large bundle of firewood. And in politics, it means that people surrender voluntarily or forcibly to a ruler to manage their affairs and decide their fate on their behalf. Though it may seem somewhat comfortable in the beginning, it eventually leads to tyranny in the short run and to ruin in the long run.
Perhaps my generation remembers how the sweeping popularity of President Nasser after the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the unity with Syria in 1958 made of him a tyrant who ended up with a humiliating defeat by the Israelis in 1967, a defeat that Egypt and the Arab nation paid for dearly in the half century that followed it.
President Sisi should learn from this lesson. He should compare the people's vast response when he asked for the mandate to confront terrorism to their lesser response when he urged them to participate in the elections.
The government said the number of public employees working in the polling stations exceeded the number of voters who showed up on the first day of the first round. It had to announce a holiday the next day and threaten a fine for people to show up. Still, 74 percent did not show up.
Maybe it is too early to conclude that Sisi’s popularity fell drastically, but this is indeed alarming. It is almost like a vote of confidence, or as in sports, a yellow card that can be followed by a red card.
And maybe there are other reasons that have nothing to do with Sisi. Maybe it is the electoral system itself, which allows for double-voting for candidates running individually and within coalitions at the same time, something that Egyptian voters have never been accustomed to over the past century.
All this is possible. Also, many voters did not know about the candidates and their programs. Maybe they blame the whole system, which is lead by Sisi, for such a complicated electoral process.
Meanwhile, the media has kept warning that the next Parliament will hamper Sisi’s efforts and that it will not last for more than a year or two in which it would pass laws already issued by presidential decree in the absence of the legislative branch, after which it would be dissolved. Maybe the voters feel there is no point in choosing a Parliament that will quickly vanish.
At any rate, I still I urge everyone to participate in the elections out of right and duty.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
