Egypt prepares for presidential run-off amidst crisis

People in Egypt head to the polls on Saturday for the first of two days of voting in a run-off election for President. The vote was supposed to be the culmination of a transition to democracy begun 16 months ago with the overthrow of the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak. But on Thursday, the nation’s constitutional court dissolved the nation’s parliament and confirmed Mubarak’s former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik would face the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsy in this weekend’s vote. The Muslim Brotherhood said the court rulings amounts to a coup against the revolution.

Experts are concerned the move to democracy in Egypt has stalled.

“It’s been more than one year and five months since our achieving particular critical gains, in terms of building democratic institutions in Egyptian society. The only achievement is the election of the new Parliament, and it is now unconstitutional, which means we are back to square one,” said Sameh Fawzy, Director of The Library of Alexandria in Egypt. “We are starting a transition period right now. It is a total political vacuum.”

Although people are demonstrating in the streets against the court decisions, Fawzy told Vatican Radio he does not think the world will see a repeat of last year’s protests.

“We have to acknowledge that the revolution against Mubarak was clear in goals and objectives. People from different walks of life came together and decided to topple the Mubarak regime,” he explained. “But now political forces which decided to topple Mubarak are in conflict…and ordinary people themselves are quite confused about the main goals of the revolution. Most of them suffered from the lack of security and the lack of order for almost 1 ½ years, and I don’t think now that any call for revolution will find wider support from the people themselves.”

Listen to the full interview by Davide Maggiore with Sameh Fawzy: