Our Position on the Upcoming Parliamentary Elections

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists

We know that the July 3 regime will not permit free—let alone even semi-free—elections in the next parliament. Instead, the security services will install a majority of loyalists and token opposition figures. This parliament is slated to vote on constitutional amendments that are now being drafted to allow Sisi to remain in power indefinitely.

It is no secret that the regime, which came to power through a military coup, relies exclusively on the security apparatus and disregards politics and politicians alike. In the eyes of that apparatus, the “ideal politician” takes orders and operates strictly within the “permissible bounds”—preferably remaining inert altogether.

The July 3 regime is unlike Mubarak’s system, which—beyond the security services—also leaned on the ruling National Democratic Party and its operatives across the governorates and on the Muslim Brotherhood as an opposition organization capable of absorbing popular mobilization.
Today, this crisis-ridden regime faces external and internal challenges of its own making, leaving it terrified of any mass movement or political reform. Regionally, neither its complicity in the genocide in Gaza for two years, nor its imprisonment of hundreds who stood in solidarity with Gaza, nor its disastrous gas deal to placate the ruling right in the occupying state—which insists on displacing thousands of Palestinians to Sinai, a direct threat to the regime’s stability and a demolition of the capitulation agreements concluded since 1978—has helped it.

Domestically, the regime continues to sell off Egypt piece by piece to service mounting debt; it crushes working people under surging prices and the privatization of health, education, water, and other services; and it insists on pushing through legislation hostile to the popular classes, most notably the new labor law and amendments to old-rent tenancies.

For all these reasons, the regime rejected the opposition’s demands for democratic reform or amending the electoral system. It insists on proceeding with the vote under the shadow of despotism and under the same laws: half the seats through closed, winner-takes-all lists, plus 5 percent appointed directly by the president, while competition for individual seats is largely confined to the wealthy and well-connected.

Although the political arena is closed and the public is discouraged and reluctant to engage in a broad struggle, we have decided to contest individual-seat races as a small, limited opportunity to engage the public sectors and present a socio-political program committed to the popular classes.
We harbor no illusions about the regime’s legitimacy; it rests on force. Our absence or participation will not isolate it internationally, and the prerequisites for a boycott as an electoral tactic are absent—particularly since nearly all political forces are participating, except the Brotherhood—while the mass movement is at low ebb.

Likewise, we harbor no illusions about the limits of this contest or its immediate gains. Yet we believe the correct choice for revolutionaries is never to let any arena of struggle pass without using it; they must step forward to put forth their vision and strive to organize the masses whenever space opens. Disciplined participation, despite the expected difficulties and risks, is like throwing a stone into stagnant waters; it may, over the medium term, help open up the political field.