Using elections to assert guaranteed victories in Egypt and Syria

In recent weeks, two elections have taken place in the Middle East. The first was in Egypt, where polling took place between 26 and 28 May; the second was in Syria, where voting began on Tuesday.

There are obvious differences between the two polls. Syria is in the throes of a violent and protracted civil war. As such, the election is affected by the constraints of a warzone – officially, 15 million people are registered to vote, but in practice, this can only take place in areas under government control which skews the results from the outset. The rebels have boycotted the election, saying that it is illegitimate and voting will not take place in the areas they control. For the first time ever, two candidates will stand against the incumbent President Bashar al-Assad, but it is a foregone conclusion that Assad will win. The vote is, in many respects, Assad’s answer to the uprising: a defiant demonstration of victory that is only a show of democracy.

Western governments have said they will not recognize the election’s legitimacy, given that there are no serious opposition contenders or independent monitors, and that voting cannot take place in the areas under rebel control. Very few western journalists were given visas to cover the event, so reports about turnout cannot be verified.

The poll in Egypt, meanwhile, ostensibly took place in a time of peace. The country is not technically in a state of war – but the political context is polarized and volatile. Ever since the last elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in July 2013, the military-backed interim government has been engaged in a brutal crackdown against Morsi’s Islamist supporters, as well as against secular human rights activists and journalists. In the run up to the poll, there was some uncertainty about whether international monitoring organisations would be present. The US-based Carter Centre, which observed the 2011 parliamentary and 2012 presidential elections in Egypt said it would not observe polling day procedures because of the lack of a “genuinely competitive campaign environment”.

Like the Syrian election, the Egyptian polls held few surprises. As expected, Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, former head of the army and mastermind of the July 2013 coup, was elected with a landslide. Critics have argued that the election was a sham, designed to confer legitimacy on the Egyptian military takeover; the US has suspended part of its $1.5bn annual aid, saying they will only restore it if authorities demonstrate a return to democracy. The turnout was around 47 per cent, which is respectable, but short of the 80 per cent that Al-Sisi had called for. The military’s goal of demonstrating powerful public support was, ironically undermined by the measures that the government took to ensure a high turnout: threatening fines against non-voters, making bus and train travel free to help voters move around, and extending the vote to a third day.

In both countries, there is, undoubtedly a thread of genuine enthusiasm and support for the victor. Syrian state television broadcast footage of enthusiastic voters proclaiming their love for Assad. Many chose not to vote in the privacy of polling booths so they could publically show that they were circling “Assad”. The Syrian broadcasts of joyful voters all over the country may or may not be exaggerated, but either way, they serve as a reminder that Assad controls much of the country, and commands the loyalty of a significant segment of the Syrian population. Similarly, in Egypt, fervor for Sisi is real. The Election Commission said he gained 23.78 million votes, or 96.9 per cent of the total. His only rival, leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, received just 775,000 votes.

But the enthusiastic support of some sections of society is not enough to confer legitimacy on an election. Just as Syria’s rebels boycotted the election in Egypt, so supporters of Morsi refused to take part in Egypt. If large swathes of the population do not even take part in the process, it is, of course, seriously undermined. Eric Bjornlung, president of Democracy International, one of the main international observation groups, summed this up, telling the Guardian: “Egypt’s repressive political environment made a genuinely democratic presidential election impossible.”

While there are crucial differences between the two elections – for starters, doubts over the election are more clear-cut in Syria, an active war zone where killing continues unabated – it is possible to draw a parallel. Both polls took place in a context so polarized that it undermines the possibility of a genuinely free and fair contest. This raises important questions about the correct circumstances in which democracy can flourish, and about the uses and abuses of elections themselves – if they are used simply to assert a victory that is already guaranteed, then there seems to be no point in holding them at all.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.