(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) It is not particularly surprising that thousands of Egyptians took the streets yet again at the weekend, in the wake of final tabulations from last week's presidential election and the announcement that the run-off poll on June 16-17 would be a contest between a pair of conservatives, albeit of different stripes.
Front-runner Mohammed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party was the Muslim Brotherhood's second-choice candidate, propelled into the position after Khairat Al Shater, a businessman with a little more charisma, was disqualified on the seemingly spurious basis of having faced politically motivated criminal charges under Hosni Mubarak's regime. Morsi will face Ahmed Shafiq, who loyally served Mubarak as civil aviation minister for about a decade before being briefly elevated to the post of prime minister last year. The former air force general has been unrepentant about his past, and is now able to project himself as the only credible bulwark against an Islamist takeover, after the Brotherhood and the more extreme Salafists together obtained two-thirds of parliamentary seats in last year's legislative elections.
It is widely assumed that Shafiq is decidedly the preferred candidate for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), which assumed power after a revolutionary upsurge early last year led to Mubarak's ouster. However, the Brotherhood too has been remarkably conciliatory towards the armed forces, offering no indication that it would challenge military's economic ascendancy.
Scaf is supposed to hand over power to whoever wins the run-off. Egypt does not, however, as yet have a new constitution, so the question of how much power the next president will have vis-a-vis parliament (and, perhaps more crucially, the army) remains unresolved.
Given that last week's election was the first genuine contest of its kind in Egyptian history, what is one to read into the appalling turnout of 46 per cent? Apathy? Cynicism? Fear? A cocktail of all three?
A lack of acquaintance with the democratic process may have had something to do with it - in previous elections, after all, the overwhelming winner was predetermined. However, it did not require a great deal of political nous to realise that something different was afoot this time around. And even sceptics who suspected the outcome may still be manipulated surely ought to have considered giving democracy a chance.
After all, the roster of candidates may have been uninspiring, but the political spectrum it represented wasn't exactly narrow. Elements of the old regime were in evidence not only in the shape of Shafiq but also the rather higher-profile Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister able to distance himself from the Mubarak legacy on account of the decade he spent as secretary-general of the Arab League.
There was even an alternative Islamist, Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader who appeared to be attracting a considerably wider range of interest than Morsi, with supporters who ranged from members of the left-wing intelligentsia (his political adviser, Rabab Al Mahdi, is described as a Marxist professor) and anti-Islamist Copts to Salafists.
Until a few weeks ago, Abul Fotouh and Moussa were considered the front-runners. In the event, they were both outpolled by Hamdeen Sabbahi of Al Karamah party, an independent Nasserist who polled more than 20 per cent of the vote. After unsuccessfully demanding a recount, he declared his party would boycott the run-off vote as it could support neither the Brotherhood nor remnants of Mubarak's regime.
With its neoliberal economic agenda and ambivalence on a variety of other issues, the Brotherhood has been hinting that neither Scaf nor Washington has much to fear from its ascendancy. It is difficult not to empathise, meanwhile, with Al Ahram commentator Hani Shukrallah's conclusion that: "Having stunned themselves and the world by staging a great revolution, at enormous sacrifice, many Egyptians felt they were back in square one, the very square from which their despised deposed president used to taunt them for 30 years: 'It's me or the Muslim Brotherhood'."
That's a very different square, no doubt, from Tahrir Square and all that it continues to symbolise. It would, however, be premature to abandon all hope. Uncertainties abound, in the region as much as in Egypt, and even the most disconsolate Egyptians must surely realise that they are at this point considerably better off than the Syrians - their partners long ago in the short-lived United Arab Republic.
They may also be inclined to wonder why some of the forces that were distraught at Mubarak's removal are so keen to topple Bashar Al Assad's government. It's a monstrous regime, no doubt, but some of its opponents - including the local Muslim Brotherhood - have hardly distinguished themselves as great humanitarians, amid growing evidence that it may not have been Damascus alone that was responsible for the horrific bloodshed of the past few days.
Many seasons have come and gone since Tunisia kicked off the Arab Spring of 2011. The transition in Tunis was the smoothest. Libya arguably fared the worst, with a civil war supplemented by foreign intervention. The status quo has been sustained in Bahrain and the complexities compounded in Yemen. Smouldering Syria explodes every now and then, and Kofi Annan's efforts to stave off an all-out conflagration seem doomed.
Egypt isn't, by any stretch, the worst off. But what happens there perhaps matters the most. Egypt is also a reminder that a revolution isn't an event but a process. To Egyptians depressed by the choice they face in the short-term, one could do worse than repeat American labour activist Joe Hill's advice from nearly a century ago: 'Don't waste any time in mourning. Organise.'
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