Egypt gears up for elections amid political storm

A series of explosions in Syria are receiving front-page coverage in the Arab media Tuesday, raising the question of the relevance of UN monitors tasked to attain calm on the ground.

Liberal daily Al-Hayat reports in its headline that “Bloody explosions rock Syria and the mission of observers.” The explosions, the daily reports, took place in the city of Idlib as well as Syria’s central bank in Damascus, which was attacked by an RPG missile. The photo in the article displays a ruined building in Idlib following the attack.

“Saudi Arabia: Damascus is ‘stalling,’ and the repeated extensions are costing lives,” reads the headline of Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, which displays the same damaged building from a different angle. The stark Saudi warning was issued Monday by King Abdullah during a government meeting, the daily reports.

Arab nationalist daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi adds that two Libyans belonging to Al-Qaeda were killed and a third critically injured in an explosion of a charge they were preparing in an apartment in the northern city of Aleppo. Weapons and large sums of money were apparently found in the apartment, which they used as a base, the daily reports.

Bin Laden and his disasters

Arab media is giving much attention to a series of documents the Americans reported confiscating in the home of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

“Bin Laden in documents to be released by Washington: Al-Qaeda faces disaster after disaster,” reads the headline of A-Sharq Al-Awsat. The daily reports that another document, attributed to bin Laden’s second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahri, outlines the organization’s strategy for Afghanistan following a withdrawal of American forces.

One of the documents, Al-Hayat reports, warns the United Kingdom not to extradite an al-Qaeda representative in Europe, Abu Qatada, to Jordan.

The correspondence describes such a move as “a crime that will become a concern for it [the United Kingdom] and its nationals around the world.”

Egypt: Brotherhood and army head for a fight

The political arena in Egypt is getting significant coverage in Tuesday’s Arab papers.

A-Sharq Al-Awsat reports on Egyptian efforts to calm tensions with Saudi Arabia in the wake of the diplomatic crisis between the two states, which resulted in Saudi Arabia withdrawing its ambassador Sunday. According to the daily, Egypt’s Revolution Party will organize a solidarity sit-in across the closed Saudi embassy in Cairo Tuesday, to express “the ties, love and appreciation that link the Egyptian and Saudi peoples.”

Al-Hayat, for its part, focuses on the internal Egyptian scene, reporting that in the coming days the Muslim Brotherhood and the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the military rulers of the country, are headed for a political showdown. The Brotherhood had demanded the replacement of the current government, appointed by the army and headed by Kamal Ganzouri. But political sources tell Al-Hayat that the military is planning no such change, making a clash with the Brotherhood inevitable.

On Monday, Egypt’s presidential election campaign was officially launched with a political surprise. The hard-line Islamist Salafist movement, represented in parliament by the Nour party, gave its support to independent candidate Abd Al-Munim Abu-Fattouh, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Quds Al-Arabi leads with Monday’s Al-Ahram poll which gave independent candidate Amr Moussa the lead with 41% and Muslim Brotherhood candidate Muhammad Mursi the sixth place, with only 3.6% of the vote. The daily stresses that the results are inaccurate, as most Egyptian voters have not yet decided whom to vote for.

Ghassan Imam, a columnist for A-Sharq Al-Awsat, writes that Egypt has misinterpreted democracy to mean elections alone, without the essential precursors. He explains that democracy is first and foremost about institution building and constitution drafting, on the basis of which laws can later be passed.

“In revolutionary Egypt, a malfunction occurred from the start,” he writes. “The democratic game was warped as a result of the terrible mistakes in setting priorities. Under pressure from the religious street, the ruling military council agreed to conduct the first free and fair elections in modern Egypt. A permanent Egyptian constitution should have been laid first, to serve as a focal point for Egypt’s new-found free political life.”

Meanwhile, Egyptian establishment daily Al-Ahram reports that the presidential elections committee has begun studying the mistakes in the parliamentary elections carried out in Egypt, so as to avoid repeating its mistakes. It announced that this time around, polling boxes will be made of a transparent and unbreakable material and sealed with an electric code which will make tampering impossible.