A week ago, the two candidates polling the highest in Egypt's upcoming presidential elections faced off in the first ever televised debate of its kind in the nation's history. Former foreign minister and Arab League president Amr Moussa barbed with former Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh for nearly four hours on a range of mostly general issues. I watched the debate in downtown Cairo's open-air Borsa cafe, a few hundred meters from Tahrir Square, and contributed reporting to this New York Times piece by David Kirkpatrick.
The debate started half an hour late--Aboul Fotouh was reportedly held up by Cairo's notorious traffic--and followed nearly two hours of pre-debate commentary by a handful of Egyptian media personalities. A comparison was drawn to the first televised presidential debate in the United States in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon, and of course as a political junkie, comparisons to other debates in the America and Europe were at the back of my mind all night.
The Borsa Cafe--named after the stock exchange which is located beside it--is a maze of pedestrian walkways twisting between beautiful Belle Epoque apartment buildings. Cafes on the ground floors serve outdoor seating areas that blend seamlessly into one another. Dozens of young Egyptian men skirt around the tightly packed plastic tables to bring guests non-alcoholic drinks and water pipes to patrons who range from large groups of young shabab to middle aged couples to old men. The cafe is liveliest on evenings like this, after a hot day, and especially when there is a big event like a football match.
I pulled up a plastic lawn chair in front of a 40 inch flat screen TV and huge speakers rigged up in the middle of a cobblestone path. Seated behind a 30-something year old man and his veiled but opinionated wife and beside a group of university-aged men, I listened as much to their commentary as to the debate itself. Similar crowds had gathered around other television sets nearby, and the difference in timing between one channel's broadcast and another's created an echo of the candidates' speech. It was easy from this perspective, though, to gauge the reaction of a large audience.
Though there are about five top tier candidates, this debate featured just two of them. A young man in my seating area didn't mind much. Asked if he would prefer to see more candidates on the stage at the same time, he said he was satisfied for now with the fact that there was any debate at all and expected to see other candidates pair off in future debates. He's right to be modest; the idea of two people debating in public their credentials for the top job in the nation and thousands of others watching and commenting was unthinkable two years ago. Despite the shortcomings and false promises of the revolution, the barrier of fear has widely been broken.
The debate was split into four quarters, each one featuring three questions addressed to both candidates and then an opportunity for each candidate to pose a question directly to the other one and a response. Most of the pre-arranged questions were soft balls that gave the candidates the opportunity to expand on their stump speeches. The fun came with cross examination!
The sharpest and most repeated points of contention were Aboul Fotouh's claim that Moussa was part of the old Mubarak regime (he endorsed Mubarak for reelection in 2010) and Moussa's claim that Aboul Fotouh was a double personality--a violent Islamist and a peaceful liberal. Aboul Fotouh painted himself as a true opposition figure who was imprisoned and tortured under Mubarak's regime, in whose service Moussa was an employee for several decades. Moussa said he set his own policy as foreign minister, boasted his extensive experience in government, and accused Aboul Fotouh of duplicity. Aboul Fotouh also hits Moussa for having a weaker sense of Islamic law.
After an hour and a half of what had become a tedious back and forth, there was a merciful halftime break during which many of the viewers in the Borsa left. Most people cannot bear to watch more than half an hour of any political debate, so I give credit to the folks who watched the entire first hour and a half. They didn't end up missing much, as the candidates kept hammering home the same few points. By the time the second half ended at nearly 2am, Borsa was nearly empty with just a handful of men still gathered around the televisions. One TV had been switched back to the regular programming of scantily clad women in music videos.
Though there were a few questions on important issues like minimum wages, the debate focused largely on values issues: who's more revolutionary and who's more Islamic? There are major challenges facing the country right now, but the matter of national identity is still crowding them out. The revolution didn't settle that identity issue and it's unlikely that the election will either, but it's still all anyone seems to want to talk about.
As I was leaving the cafe, I asked a few of the stragglers who they thought had won. They both lost! one man responded. Another viewer, a student in Al Azhar University's journalism school and an Aboul Fotouh supporter, said he thought his candidate had done well but not as well as he expected. A third guy told me the debate hadn't resolved much. Whoever was going to vote for Moussa still would, and whoever was going to vote for Aboul Fotouh still would. Those who were undecided might lean more towards Aboul Fotouh, but there's still so much time to decide.
It seems most people are waiting until the last minute to make up their mind. The clock is ticking...
The debate started half an hour late--Aboul Fotouh was reportedly held up by Cairo's notorious traffic--and followed nearly two hours of pre-debate commentary by a handful of Egyptian media personalities. A comparison was drawn to the first televised presidential debate in the United States in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon, and of course as a political junkie, comparisons to other debates in the America and Europe were at the back of my mind all night.
The Borsa Cafe--named after the stock exchange which is located beside it--is a maze of pedestrian walkways twisting between beautiful Belle Epoque apartment buildings. Cafes on the ground floors serve outdoor seating areas that blend seamlessly into one another. Dozens of young Egyptian men skirt around the tightly packed plastic tables to bring guests non-alcoholic drinks and water pipes to patrons who range from large groups of young shabab to middle aged couples to old men. The cafe is liveliest on evenings like this, after a hot day, and especially when there is a big event like a football match.
I pulled up a plastic lawn chair in front of a 40 inch flat screen TV and huge speakers rigged up in the middle of a cobblestone path. Seated behind a 30-something year old man and his veiled but opinionated wife and beside a group of university-aged men, I listened as much to their commentary as to the debate itself. Similar crowds had gathered around other television sets nearby, and the difference in timing between one channel's broadcast and another's created an echo of the candidates' speech. It was easy from this perspective, though, to gauge the reaction of a large audience.
Though there are about five top tier candidates, this debate featured just two of them. A young man in my seating area didn't mind much. Asked if he would prefer to see more candidates on the stage at the same time, he said he was satisfied for now with the fact that there was any debate at all and expected to see other candidates pair off in future debates. He's right to be modest; the idea of two people debating in public their credentials for the top job in the nation and thousands of others watching and commenting was unthinkable two years ago. Despite the shortcomings and false promises of the revolution, the barrier of fear has widely been broken.
The debate was split into four quarters, each one featuring three questions addressed to both candidates and then an opportunity for each candidate to pose a question directly to the other one and a response. Most of the pre-arranged questions were soft balls that gave the candidates the opportunity to expand on their stump speeches. The fun came with cross examination!
The sharpest and most repeated points of contention were Aboul Fotouh's claim that Moussa was part of the old Mubarak regime (he endorsed Mubarak for reelection in 2010) and Moussa's claim that Aboul Fotouh was a double personality--a violent Islamist and a peaceful liberal. Aboul Fotouh painted himself as a true opposition figure who was imprisoned and tortured under Mubarak's regime, in whose service Moussa was an employee for several decades. Moussa said he set his own policy as foreign minister, boasted his extensive experience in government, and accused Aboul Fotouh of duplicity. Aboul Fotouh also hits Moussa for having a weaker sense of Islamic law.
After an hour and a half of what had become a tedious back and forth, there was a merciful halftime break during which many of the viewers in the Borsa left. Most people cannot bear to watch more than half an hour of any political debate, so I give credit to the folks who watched the entire first hour and a half. They didn't end up missing much, as the candidates kept hammering home the same few points. By the time the second half ended at nearly 2am, Borsa was nearly empty with just a handful of men still gathered around the televisions. One TV had been switched back to the regular programming of scantily clad women in music videos.
Though there were a few questions on important issues like minimum wages, the debate focused largely on values issues: who's more revolutionary and who's more Islamic? There are major challenges facing the country right now, but the matter of national identity is still crowding them out. The revolution didn't settle that identity issue and it's unlikely that the election will either, but it's still all anyone seems to want to talk about.
As I was leaving the cafe, I asked a few of the stragglers who they thought had won. They both lost! one man responded. Another viewer, a student in Al Azhar University's journalism school and an Aboul Fotouh supporter, said he thought his candidate had done well but not as well as he expected. A third guy told me the debate hadn't resolved much. Whoever was going to vote for Moussa still would, and whoever was going to vote for Aboul Fotouh still would. Those who were undecided might lean more towards Aboul Fotouh, but there's still so much time to decide.
It seems most people are waiting until the last minute to make up their mind. The clock is ticking...
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