Even after the stunning results achieved by the candidates of the Islamist movement (from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists) in the first round of the first phase of Egypt's parliamentary elections, the secular forces competing against the Islamists have not realized the extent of the setback they have suffered. They have chosen to bury their heads in the sand and taken the easier road of exaggerating some of the negative aspects of what took place before and during the voting process, and terrorizing society with the fact that “Hulagu's horde” has come to rule the country, or dwarfing the issue by discussing trivial matters such as the Islamist stance on swimming suits! They also blow out of proportion some of the behavior of members of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists, such as distributing meat and vegetables to the voting public! By this logic, secular forces are publicizing that they have done what they were required to and did not fall short, that the results do not reflect the true will of Egyptian voters, and that the reasons for the Islamists' victory is unconnected to the poor performance of secular forces since the fall of the regime of President Hosni Mubarak! Not one of the prominent figures of the liberal, leftist, nationalist or Nasserist movements has come out to confess before the public that their confrontation with the Islamists was managed in a wrong way and with the wrong methods. None of them admitted that relying on the media and satellite television to smear the Islamists' image made people sympathize with them even more; or that advertising intensively for the candidates of the liberal movement on movie, drama and music television channels and between talk show segments, or deploying publicity posters above bridges and on the sides of streets and public squares amidst advertisements for soft drinks and movies, did not bring in the votes of electors but rather drove them away; or that fishing for the unrestrained behavior of some Islamists and spreading an expression said by one or more of them on every social media website and between the segments of programs on television channels owned by liberal businessmen did not make people overlook the similarly unrestrained behavior practiced by prominent figures of the liberal elite and the embarrassing enthusiasm some of the major figures of the secular state fell into, such as the demand by one of them for the West to intervene to protect minorities, or the spending on the campaigns of secular forces in the elections! Those of a liberal orientation did not reexamine themselves, nor did any of them discover that some of those who were trying to drive people away from the Islamists fell into blatant mistakes which people interpreted as not merely criticism of Islamists, but rather as a clash with the Muslim religion itself. Similarly, they did not discover that the criticism of Islamists for using mosques in politics came from those who at the same time were racing to obtain the approval of the Church, and to gain its support for their candidates! Secular forces did not notice that their division, fragmentation and scattering provided the Islamists with competitive advantages, leading some Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist candidates to win in districts where liberals competed against each other. The liberals did not study their experiences with new parties, which produced five liberal parties without any need for them, except that of looking for roles to play or for… spotlights. Secular forces did not realize the size of the contradictions between their constituents, liberals, Nasserists, leftists and nationalists, and they did not offer people justifications for why they gathered to confront the Military Council and the Islamists, leaving and disappointing the street. Secular forces did not recognize that their conceited discourse to people distanced their candidates from the public of voters, in the face of the calm, simple and popular discourse employed by the Islamists, by which they achieved a stronger connection with people. Did the liberals ask themselves why Dr. Amr Hamzawy (a liberal) won in the first round and obtained over 160 thousand votes, compared to 40 thousand for his competitor from the Muslim Brotherhood? And how did the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood win in Maadi and obtain around 450 thousand votes, achieving a new record in the history of Egyptian elections? Did they realize that Hamzawy chose to run as candidate in the district which had registered the greatest number of “No” votes in the referendum on constitutional changes? This is the same district in which the Muslim Brotherhood did not for two decades put forward as candidates any of its major figures, leaving it free for former head of the Doctors' Syndicate Hamdy El-Sayed. Hamzawy thus obtained much better competitive chances than his Muslim Brotherhood competitor. Did the liberals learn their lesson? And did the leftists realize the size of their mistakes? Did the advocates of the secular state agree to stop weeping and wailing, and to start following strategies other than those that led them to defeat? They did not agree, because they did not learn, did not realize, and did not change their course. They are moving forward on the same path that grants the Islamists people's votes… and their admiration.
