Carnegie's Egypt Election Guide Revisited

One month from tomorrow, Egypt holds Parliamentary elections, the last before the critical Presidential elections next year. There's no doubt that the National Democratic Party will win the Parliamentary vote, and of course that their candidate will win the Presidency, but who their candidate will be is still shrouded in mystery. And how free the Parliamentary vote will be is also up in the air, though not looking optimal just now.

I've mentioned it before, but this seems to be as good a time as any to again refer you to the Carnegie Endowment's Guide to Egypt's Elections, which includes excellent data on such obscure issues as all the legal parties, some of which are known only to their own limited membership, the non-party opposition movements, one of which, the technically illegal Muslim Brotherhood, is the largest opposition bloc in the present Parliament, details of the constitutional and legal framework, which is sometimes deliberately obtuse, and issues relating to election monitoring.

If they — mostly, I think, Michele Dunne and Amr Hamzawy — had n't done this, I'd have to write a lot more in the coming month. This way I can just link.

Egyptian elections do have some suspense, though not about who's going to run the country; they do matter to local folks in local places, the smaller the better because they are below the government's radar. Let the games begin.