Eleições contrarrevolucionárias

Enquanto a revolução democrática ganha novo fôlego no Egito com a multidão voltando às ruas para exigir a saída da junta militar, o cientista político Andrew Reynolds faz uma séria advertência sobre as eleições parlamentares que ocorrerão amanhã. Com a legislação eleitoral cuidadosamente formatada para garantir a prevalência de grupos políticos do regime de Mubarak, o país corre o risco de ter minorias importantes subrepresentadas, o que comprometerá gravemente a legitimidade do regime pós-ditatorial:

On countless occasions, political parties went to the ruling military council to object to drafts of the electoral law and were brushed off with piecemeal changes. Civic groups concerned about the representation of women and minorities were not even given a seat at the table. And the United Nations, which played a major role in assisting Tunisia with its election, was denied access to election planners in Cairo.
The result is an election that will overrepresent the larger parties while shutting out smaller ones, marginalize Coptic Christians and progressives and consign millions of Egyptians to voting for losers through an overly complicated process that combines proportional representation with majoritarianism and an antiquated quota system.
One-third of the 498 seats in Parliament will be chosen from districts in which the winners must get a majority of the vote (in a runoff if necessary). In these districts, name recognition gives established power brokers — local strongmen who held sway before the revolution — the upper hand. Even if most of the elected candidates are not high-ranking apparatchiks of the old regime — or “remnants,” as Egyptians call them — many are likely to have been cogs in the corrupt machine that ruled Egypt for decades.
Two-thirds of the seats will be contested in proportional representation districts, where voters select among party candidate lists and each party win seats in proportion to its share of votes.
Unlike in Tunisia, which successfully used a simple across-the-board proportional system to include many voices in the country’s legislative assembly, Egypt’s multilayered system is likely to marginalize new progressive, secular and liberal groups that lack grass-roots networks across the country.

Assim são mudanças de regime. Como lembra Jack Goldstone, esse é o padrão típico de revoluções:

[...] those who take power immediately after the fall of the old regime do not stay in power long; rather they serve as placeholders, seeking to retain as much of the old regime forms and policies as possible, but soon giving way to the radical demands that lay behind the revolution in the first place.

Aqui no Brasil, guardadas as devidas proporções, a transição democrática foi feita sob controle dos militares: começou em 1979, com a anistia, passando pela eleição indireta de Tancredo Neve, sobreviveu à posse de José Sarney (antigo aliado do regime militar), sedimentou-se com a Constituição de 1988 e só foi concluída com a eleição de Collor em 1989. Torço para que o Egito não perca tanto tempo nem passe por tantos percalços como nós.