WI: Mohammed Morsi loses Election?

Let's say Mohammed Morsi loses the Presidential Elections in Egypt in 2012. Although the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists won the 2011/2012 Parliamentary elections in Egypt overwhelmingly the Presidential elections were much closer. In the first round of elections Morsi came in first but only got 24.78% of the vote. Ahmed Shafik (who represented the old but secular NDP regime) came extremely close with 23.66% and Hamdeen Sabahi (a secular Nasserist candidate) came third with 20.72%, the rest of the vote was split between 10 candidates.

In the second round of elections only Morsi and Shafik ran against each other with Morsi winning 52% to 48%. Morsi was later overthrown by Abdul Fattah el-Sisi in a coup/revolution a year later in 2013.

How might Egypt have turned out if Shafik or Sabahi had won the Presidential election? A secular President and a parliament comprised overwhelmingly of Islamists would be interesting to watch. In OTL the Parliament was suspended by the Supreme Court in 2012 and so I would expect that would happen regardless, this time leaving the Brotherhood excluded from the government. A new constitution would be created that would be far more secular.
 
Let's say Mohammed Morsi loses the Presidential Elections in Egypt in 2012. Although the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists won the 2011/2012 Parliamentary elections in Egypt overwhelmingly the Presidential elections were much closer. In the first round of elections Morsi came in first but only got 24.78% of the vote. Ahmed Shafik (who represented the old but secular NDP regime) came extremely close with 23.66% and Hamdeen Sabahi (a secular Nasserist candidate) came third with 20.72%, the rest of the vote was split between 10 candidates.

In the second round of elections only Morsi and Shafik ran against each other with Morsi winning 52% to 48%. Morsi was later overthrown by Abdul Fattah el-Sisi in a coup/revolution a year later in 2013.

How might Egypt have turned out if Shafik or Sabahi had won the Presidential election? A secular President and a parliament comprised overwhelmingly of Islamists would be interesting to watch. In OTL the Parliament was suspended by the Supreme Court in 2012 and so I would expect that would happen regardless, this time leaving the Brotherhood excluded from the government. A new constitution would be created that would be far more secular.

Hard to say, though my guess is overall things would be better if not great. Keep in mind that under almost any post-Mubarak presidency with this POD, Egypt is going to at best resemble post-Musharraf Pakistan - a country which is more-or-less democratic but where the army and security services retain a lot of overt influence and where a lot of basic rights are somewhat qualified. That said, the full-on counterrevolution which occurred wasn't inevitable either.

Shafik would have been Sisi-lite. That's not a good thing. However, Sisi has the luxury of a massive public backlash to the Brotherhood plus the mass protests of June 30, which gave him a large mandate to crack down and impose a neo-authoritarian regime. Shafik may have had significantly less room to maneuver. He would have been hemmed in both by a still-powerful Brotherhood and a still-active secular opposition. You'll still got an illiberal constitution and various curbs on free speech and assembly, but it won't go quite as far as Sisi's have, and unlike Sisi he might have to make various concessions to activists in order to maintain public order. Electoral competition and the media may relatively free under him, for example, despite some issues. On this note, actually, I dug up this old post by a liberal Egyptian blogger who advocated for Shafik over Morsi in the runoff. In hindsight, a lot of his predictions look pretty prescient.

Sabbahi probably leads to a better outcome still. Sabbahi himself wasn't particularly progressive (he's a self-proclaimed Nasserist with some authoritarian views and tendencies). But he'd probably be the candidate likeliest to enjoy support from revolutionaries and secular activists as well as being tolerated by the army and the Egyptian deep state. He'd probably put in place a somewhat more secular constitution and try to build out a political faction of his own in new parliamentary elections. On the flip side, I can't see him managing the economy well given his populist tendencies (against Egypt's need to reduce subsidies) so expect some chaos from that.

The best candidate IMO would have been Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who was briefly the frontrunner but came in a narrow 4th, slightly behind Sabbahi. A former reformist Brotherhood leader, he was arguably the most "liberal" of the major candidates, and would have been the likeliest to negotiate a Tunisia-like constitutional settlement that could have helped consolidate a more democratic system. The challenge for him would be that he'd have no obvious faction supporting him. He'd draw nearly as much opposition from the Deep State and the army as Morsi did, plus he was heavily opposed by the Brotherhood. So he'd have been relying on a shaky coalition of revolutionaries and might be a fairly weak leader otherwise. But on the plus side, he'd likely avoid the power grabs that Morsi attempted - power grabs which helped catalyze support for his overthrow from both the army and the public.
 
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This is a bit unrelated to the original question but how do you think the Parliamentary elections in September of this year are going to turn out? Despite the control Sisi and the army have over the government, I doubt they're going to revert to overt dominant party rule. I predict you're going to see a mix of several different parties and coalitions with the Islamists and other anti-Sisi oppositional parties losing out in order to give the appearance of democracy at work.
 
I'd like to see a Mohammed El-Baradei presidency. He'd be secular, able to work with the West (though he would embarrass some prominent officials in various governments), he would not be aiding the uprising in Libya (thus cutting down on the spread of IS and Al-Quaida) and would call for inspections of Dimona.
 
I'd like to see a Mohammed El-Baradei presidency. He'd be secular, able to work with the West (though he would embarrass some prominent officials in various governments), he would not be aiding the uprising in Libya (thus cutting down on the spread of IS and Al-Quaida) and would call for inspections of Dimona.

El-Baradei was too fringe by Egyptian standards though IIRC...
 
I think a Sabahi presidency would've been interesting. He probably would've been Nasser-lite, pushing for the restoration of Egypt's regional dominance while pursuing a pan-Arabist foreign policy and taking a harder line on Israel which would've strained relations with the west but also might've gained him a following in other Arab states.
 
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