Some of us saw this coming.
A man holds the Quran during a protest at Tahrir Square in Cairo on July 29, 2011 (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters).
Many hopeful Egyptians were stunned after the liberal youth behind the Arab Spring movement were decimated in the Egyptian elections this week.
FOX News reported:
Egypt’s top reformist leader has said the liberal youth behind the country’s uprising have been “decimated” in parliamentary elections dominated by Islamists and expressed concern about the rise of hard-line religious elements advocating extremist ideas such as banning women from driving.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize laureate and possible presidential candidate, said Sunday he hopes moderate Islamists will rein in the extremists and send a reassuring message to the world that Egypt will not go down an ultraconservative religious path.
“The youth feel let down. They don’t feel that any of the revolution’s goals have been achieved,” ElBaradei told The Associated Press in an interview on the same day electoral authorities announced that Islamist parties captured an overwhelming majority of votes in the first round of elections last week. “They got decimated,” he said, adding the youth failed to unify and form “one essential critical mass.”
The High Election Commission announced that the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party garnered 36.6 percent of the 9.7 million valid ballots cast last week for party lists. The Nour Party, representing the more hard-line Salafi Islamists, captured 24.4 percent.
The tallies offer only a partial indication of how the new parliament will look. There are still two more rounds of voting in 18 of the country’s 27 provinces over the coming month and runoff elections on Monday and Tuesday to determine almost all of the seats allocated for individuals in the first round. But the grip of the Islamists over the next parliament appears set, particularly considering their popularity in provinces voting in the next rounds.
