Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian president-elect, took a symbolic oath of office during a rousing speech in Cairo, promising dignity and social justice to a crowd of tens of thousands gathered in Tahrir Square.
He swore to uphold the constitution and "the republican system", reciting the words of an oath which he will formally take on Saturday morning in front of the supreme constitutional court. "I will look after the interests of the people and protect the independence of the nation and the safety of its territory," he said.
Morsi opened his speech by addressing himself to "the Muslims and Christians of Egypt," and promised to preserve a civil state.
"We will complete the journey in a civil state, a nationalist state, a constitutional state, a modern state," he told the crowd, to applause and cheers.
Morsi, a former Muslim Brotherhood official, promised to end torture and discrimination, and to deliver social justice for millions of Egyptians.
He also issued several challenges to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt's military rulers.
He insisted that "no institution will be above the people," critiquing an army which has sought to shield itself from parliamentary oversight. "You are the source of authority," he told the crowd.
Morsi also vowed to work for the release of civilians arrested by the army since the revolution; more than 12,000 people have been tried by military tribunals since February 2011, according to local human rights groups.
'I don't fear anyone but God'
The symbolic oath was a way for Morsi to defuse a lingering political problem. The president traditionally takes the oath of office before parliament, but the legislature was dissolved earlier this month by a high court ruling.
In response, the ruling SCAF shifted the venue to the court, but Morsi was reluctant to take the oath there, for fear of appearing to support the court's ruling.
Tens of thousands of people packed into Tahrir for the speech [EPA]The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party had the largest share of seats in parliament, and has vowed to fight its dissolution.
Much of his speech took a populist tone. He spoke for several minutes from behind a lectern, then stepped away to address the crowd more directly.
At one point, he lifted up his suit jacket to show he was not wearing body armour. "I don't fear my people," he said. "I don't fear anyone but God."
He also spoke briefly about Egypt's foreign relations, promising to improve relations with neighbours in Africa and the Middle East, and to "keep the peace".
"We will never give up the rights of Egyptians abroad," he said. "Respecting the will of the people is the basis of our foreign relations."
The president-elect tried to reassure several groups worried about what a Muslim Brotherhood presidency means for Egypt. He made several mentions of "artists and intellectuals", promising to make Egypt a cultural and artistic leader.
On the other hand, in a remark sure to worry Western leaders, Morsi also promised to work to free Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric currently serving a life sentence in the United States for planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. His pledge was most likely a sop to the Salafi groups which have made Abdel Rahman's release a prominent issue.
Not the end of military rule
Morsi will formally take his oath on Saturday morning, and then travel to Cairo University to deliver an inauguration speech.
He will take office amidst a great deal of political uncertainty. He swore to uphold the constitution, but Egypt still does not have a permanent constitution, only a series of "constitutional declarations" issued by the ruling generals.
Shortly before parliament was dissolved, lawmakers appointed a 100-member assembly to draft a new constitution. That panel, too, may be dissolved by court order, though the administrative court hearing the case says it will not issue a ruling until July.
The generals are keen to portray Saturday's swearing-in ceremony as a formal handover of control to a civilian government. But SCAF will continue to wield a great deal of power, perhaps more than Morsi: The military council will control legislative authority, and the Egyptian budget, until a new parliament is elected later this year.
It is also unclear how much power Morsi will have over the military or Egypt's sprawling security services, which spent decades oppressing the Muslim Brotherhood
A New Regime in Malaysia for Stability and ProsperityCOMMENT Behind the election stalemate gripping Malaysia is a Pakatan Rakyat government-in-waiting powered by an Islamist party that was once the font of paranoia and fear. And for the first time, many Malaysians are willing to embrace such a historic opportunity, which only years ago would have been considered almost impossible.
Anwar Ibrahim, the Pakatan Prime Minister-to-be, is now powerfully positioned to articulate a vision of a new Malaysia when – not if – today’s tripartite opposition becomes tomorrow’s government.
Political and financial scandals make for a wonderful arsenal, but Pakatan needs to wage social stability and economic prosperity for Malaysians.
Framing such a vision and articulating its policies clearly and repeatedly is now the job of the alternative government. Between now and possibly till next April, by when Premier Najib Abdul Razak is by constitutional mandate required to hold elections, PKR, DAP and PAS must target the electoral divide to convince undecided voters and even BN supporters that a new Malaysia will not be scarred by a troubled reawakening of the national psyche and body politic.
PKR, DAP and PAS must together win over those who may yet stand unconvinced that a Pakatan electoral victory in GE-13 will not usher in religious extremism, more racial division, violence, retribution and, by no means least, the economic malaise that all too often courts civil unrest and, if we may paraphrase the ever-alarmist and fear-mongering BN, regime change.
Amid talk that secret research presented to BN shows a 55-year-old government probably retaining anything between 80 and 120 federal seats out of 222, these ‘swing’ voters can render unto Pakatan what is Pakatan’s, and Malaysia’s.
A clear and present danger in the minds of many Malaysians is the possibility that PAS will revert to fundamentalism once Pakatan unseats BN.
In a living room just outside Kuala Lumpur, a seasoned journalist says: “Malaysians need to see pictures of Kit Siang and Hadi Awang standing together and convincing people that Islamic extremism is not on the agenda.”
In a café in the heart of KL, the question of whether PAS will turn after Pakatan wins is tabled. An agitator for sweeping reform suggests that “PAS will want to be re-elected after GE-13.”
In other words, PAS cannot afford to revert to its old ways if it wants to stay in government for the long haul. Malaysians need to hear this from Pakatan, in no uncertain terms, and they need to keep hearing it like a mantra. Tackling this fear head-on is so vital, the journalist said, that Pakatan should issue a “policy template”, to which all its politicians must strictly adhere under pain of disciplinary action at party level, if not expulsion.
Becoming Malaysian again
Bridging the racial divide that took a life of its own under the tutelage of Dr Mahathir Mohamed should be almost as important as winning the election for Pakatan.
One searing afternoon recently, an ardent advocate of racial understanding suggested Pakatan “should tell the people” that when it wins government, it will make Chinese manage affairs in a predominantly Malay constituency, send Malays to run an Indian area and so on…“so we begin to understand one another again”, she said.
For Pakatan, this would not set a precedent, but nothing could be more simple, or profound a strategy, if it were pushed further and deeper into the system so Malaysians may once again become simply Malaysian.
Mahathir deservedly rues the possibility that Anwar will treat him exactly like he treated his former DPM. However, Anwar would do well to measure the political expediency of some sort of amnesty for the small fish, who fear not only ouster from government but criminal prosecutions that will net and in all likelihood imprison their closest cronies, friends and family.
At street level, mitigating the fear of a sweeping purge that must run rampant among the rank and file of the Police and military would be crucial to underpinning any promise of a peaceful transition of political power; ditto for the civil service. But there are crimes, and then there are crimes, and justice must seen to be done for the worst cases.
In nearly any other truly democratic system, and to convey its message to the masses, Pakatan would have access to all media platforms, an unrestricted ability to campaign and the sort of taxpayer funding that an opposition is granted under parliamentary tenet.
But this is Malaysia, and the difficulties Pakatan faces in communicating its policies, ceramahs notwithstanding, therefore require that a new government must also bring about two vital changes to the political environment.
First, it must extinguish all state involvement in the mass media. It must forever be unacceptable for any political party to have a financial stake in media organisations like Utusan Malaysia, New Straits Times, Star, Berita Harian, national news agency Bernama and RTM.
Political patronage and ownership of the mass media is simply untenable in any functioning democracy.
Second, Pakatan must guarantee by law that all political parties in a parliamentary opposition are sufficiently funded to function effectively as a check and balance to any future Malaysian government.
It is also imperative that Pakatan navigates the ideological chasm between itself and BERSIH, the ever growing civil society movement whose only goal is thorough reform of an electoral system in which Malaysians have lost all confidence.
Pakatan and BERSIH strengthen one another, but it is BERSIH’s purity of purpose – electoral reform – that has allowed it to draw the support of Malaysians from across the political, racial and religious spectrums.
BERSIH will forever stand independent of political parties, and so it should be, because BERSIH has offered a priceless and novel opportunity in Malaysia – change of government by the will of the people.
Malaysians who have awakened to the power of a free and fair electoral system, and the very real likelihood of regime change just around the corner, will reserve the right to kick out any other government that does not meet the highest standards they shall demand of all politicians, and Pakatan will not be the exception.
Shortly after its debacle in the UP elections, Congress president Sonia Gandhi is reported to have said that perhaps part of the reason for the party's poor showing at the polls was that it was seen to have too many leaders in the field. This apparently was not a reference to Rahul and Priyanka, not to mention Sonia herself, who campaigned energetically in the state which has been the stomping ground of the Nehru-Gandhi family ever since Independence. The Congress chief's remark it seems was a wry dig at local leaders who, wittingly or otherwise, had upset the electoral applecart for the party by pulling in different directions because of personal rivalries.
Perhaps the UP elections - which left the 'new' face of the Congress as represented by Rahul with not just egg but with a masala omelette, chillies and all, on it - was indeed a case of 'too many leaders'. But could it possibly have been instead a case of not enough sub-brands being marketed under the umbrella of a super-brand, as represented by the Congress, the grand old party of Indian politics?
Thanks to growing regionalism and to the post-Mandal fragmentation of the electorate along caste lines, the days of what might be called super-brand political parties such as the Congress and its mirror image, the BJP - which also fared poorly in the assembly polls - seem to be numbered.
The space that these two 'national' parties occupied is increasingly being taken over by smaller, region- or caste-specific parties which can more accurately identify and appeal to particular interest groups: OBCs, MBCs, dalits, upper castes, minorities, and ever-changing combinations and permutations of all these.
The Indian political scene presents an increasingly complex marketing problem for contestants trying to outsell each other to voters who are becoming more and more benefit-conscious (if i vote for you what's in it for me?).
Perhaps the time has come for the two big parties which claim an all-India presence, the Congress and the BJP, to borrow a marketing strategy from the tobacco industry. More specifically, from cigarette manufacturers.
The biggest producer and seller of cigarettes in the country has over the decades devised a strategy that has become a part of the textbooks in business management courses. The strategy is founded on market segmentation based on price: what is the price that a particular segment of potential customers is prepared to pay for the product being sold, and what is the geographic dispersal of this segment?
In order to saturate all segments - or price levels - of the market, the manufacturer has promoted under its umbrella brand a whole range of sub-brands catering to every conceivable socio-economic stratum in Indian society, from the top to the bottom of the cigarette-smoking pyramid. Indeed, it has tried to broaden the base of this pyramid by using seductive pricing to woo bidi smokers to switch to aspirationally higher-status cigarettes, as car makers now are trying to encourage two- and three-wheeler drivers to graduate to Nano-technology for very little increase in cost.
Perhaps there's a lesson here for the political biggies like the Congress and the BJP to learn. Instead of trying to be all things to all market segments (vote banks) and end up being nothing much to any one constituency, the super-brand parties should promote sub-brands (Rahul, Priyanka, Robert Vadra, L K Advani, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, whoever) targeting specific segments of voters, from urban youth to rural women, from BPO employees to daily-wage earners.
The best part is that, unlike in the cigarette market, in the vote bazaar the product on offer does not have to display a statutory warning: Voting for this candidate may be injurious to your national health.
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