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Egypt's Next Leader Won't Be from Tahrir Square

(Wall Street Journal) Fouad Ajami - Two Egyptian presidential candidates will face one another in a runoff scheduled for mid-June. Mohammed Morsi is an American-educated engineer and the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood. His runoff opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, is a former commander of the Air Force and Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister. He ran on a platform of law and order, presented himself as a bulwark against the "forces of darkness" - the Islamists. So it will be the Brotherhood against the feloul, the remnants of the old regime. This is a faded, burdened country that has known many false dawns. Since the fall of Mubarak, Egypt has run down two-thirds of its foreign currency reserves, while unemployment has soared. Since no would-be ruler today has a magic wand for the country's maladies, it is perhaps no wonder that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has been so eager to cede power to a civilian government. In the vision of the Islamists, Egypt would be ruled by Shariah law. This cannot be sustained on Egyptian soil. Theocracies like Iran or Saudi Arabia rest on oil wealth, on the margin such wealth allows the rulers to mold the society. In Egypt, so dependent on foreign aid, remittances, the revenues of tourism and the kindness of strangers, a religious utopia would be undone. The writer is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
2012-05-28 00:00:00
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