Egyptian students are currently busy electing a president and a deputy for their general union, following their election of regional students’ unions. These elections enjoy remarkable media coverage, given the election results of the various regional universities, which showed a significant domination of independent students, coupled with a decline of the Islamic current students.

Egyptian students are currently busy electing a president and a deputy for their general union, following their election of regional students’ unions. These elections enjoy remarkable media coverage, given the election results of the various regional universities, which showed a significant domination of independent students, coupled with a decline of the Islamic current students.

The independents also prevailed at the elections of the University of Asyut early March when they, along with civil movements, won about 65% of the union seats, against 35% for the political Islamic movements, Strong Egypt Party, and other parties. The elected president of Asyut University’s Students Union Mohammad Assran and his deputy Mohammad Gabr are independents.

Why did the Islamic current lose?

Interestingly, the results of the student union elections have been quite different from those of the parliamentary and presidential elections during the past two years when Islamists won them with a great margin. Why?

“The Muslim Brotherhood has lost because it has no significant presence in the students’ activities,” said Abdurrahman Sanoussi, a Medical College student. Mohammad Gabr, the union’s Vice-President said: “In addition to this reason, the number of the Brotherhood students in the university is not large. True, there are student groups that are thought to be of the Brotherhood, the majority of them are in fact non-Brotherhood members. Besides, electoral fixing and partisanship have played the greater role in the elections, particularly in the first stage.”

It thus seems that Islamic movements’ students have been busy with the external political scene at the expense of the university scene, after allowing campus political activities, contrary to the situation which prevailed before the revolution. The striking feature this year is the scarcity of Brotherhood student activists at the university, compared to previous years.

Services before ideologies

Concentration on services has also played a role in deciding the results, a thing the independents have effectively demonstrated. “Activity students’ role was markedly present. They fiercely defended their seats, leading to female students’ winning 35% of the electoral seats. This year’s electoral campaigning covered not only activity programs, but also service programs concerned with the problems of accommodation and the meals served at the halls of residence,” said Ahmad Shrit, student activity official at Asyut University, stressing that the student culture has changed for the better.

Hussam Hassan, a student and Assistant Secretary of the Egyptian Democratic Party in Asyut, said the absence of religious campaigning the political Islam currents generally used in the elections was one of the factors that reduced the number of their seats. According to him, this has occurred at a time when students’ political awareness and culture have increased, against the ruling regime’s current political confusion that has led the country to a state of sharp division which may ultimately benefit the civil currents.

Dislike of party affiliation

Therefore, many students believe that the independents’ victory does not necessarily mean that one political camp has outweighed the other, but signifies a dislike of partisanship and political ideologies. And voters eventually favored the students who distanced themselves from political affiliations, although some of them are somewhat close to conventional conservative religiousness, than they did to the partisan ones.

Large turnout

The large turnout compared to previous years is attributed by many to easing the security grip that governed the electoral process in the past. “The role played by the security apparatus disappeared after the revolution. The new flexible student regulation has given the students a greater opportunity to exercise their right to participate in the elections and allowed them to embark on electoral campaigning, which was previously forbidden,” Gabr said.

Shrit suggested that the new regulation also played a major role in motivating students to participate in student activities, and then to run for elections and manage their own campaigning during the electoral process. The number of college candidates, he says, amounted to more than 2,000 students and turnout percentage was up to around 70% compared to 20% last year.