Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Trouble in Egypt

. Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Or is this "UNC Everywhere"? Poli-sci professor Andy Reynolds is not optimistic about Egypt's coming election:

“This is the most opaque process we’ve seen,” said Andrew Reynolds, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies and advises on electoral systems in new democracies. “No one, not the political parties, the United Nations” or non-governmental organizations “knows who’s even writing the law,” he said. ...

The bottom line is that this system advantages the old parties,” he said. “The people who are going to lose out are the Tahrir Square groups and the liberal movements.”


The rest of the article is also good. The consensus (from the article) seems to be that the election should be postponed to give time for groups/parties to organize properly and for mechanical electoral institutions (rules, monitors, logistics) to be constructed, but the article cites a poll in which 75% of the population think the elections should go ahead as scheduled. This certainly bears watching. I'm not especially optimistic.

(ht: Layna)

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Trouble in Egypt
 

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