Had the following published over at New Matilda
The Egyptian presidential election is imminent and the fallout from the Mubarak trial is far from settled.
Nearly a year and a half after the fall of the dictator, two critical political battles are taking place in Egypt.
One is the presidential contest which will likely see a Ahmed Shafik, a long term minister (and short term prime minister) under Mubarak face off against the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamed Morsy, in a second round of voting to be held on 16 and 17 June.
The other is the more profound battle between the amorphous street politics of the revolutionary youth and the realm of formal politics, which has delivered Egypt into what some have called the “worst possible outcome“.
New Matilda spoke with Sharif Abdel Kouddous, a highly respected Egyptian-American reporter and commentator, about the intersection between these two trends.
The revolutionaries who had so forcefully set the agenda in the protests following January 25 last year, have so far garnered “no representation in the formal political process”, Kouddous told NM.
Instead this contest is taking place between the entrenched political elite which is “fighting for its life, tooth and nail” and its “mirror establishment” in the Brotherhood.
Read the rest here.
