Egypt: The Year of the Elections and Elusive Political Reforms

The year 2005 was a momentous, yet turbulent one for Egypt. The country witnessed two major elections, presidential and parliamentary, a vibrant movement towards political reform, and a remarkable political mobility. All this came against a background of internal domestic pressures on the regime to expand the scope of pluralism, and amidst concerns that President Mubarak would run for office for a fifth term, thus ruling Egypt for 29 years. The increased interest of external actors, particularly the US and the EU, in political reforms has also prompted the regime to introduce a series of measures that allowed the country, for the first time since it became a republic, to have a multi-candidate presidential elections and a relatively more contested legislative elections.