This week, Egyptians go to the polls to choose their first democratically-elected president from about a dozen candidates. Though they’ve had several other votes in the past year, this is the one that will largely determine the outcome of the country’s dramatic revolution 16 months ago. The young liberals who ousted longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of protests – the bloggers, the tweeters, even that widely-admired Google executive, Wael Ghonim -- have since been sidelined. In the cluster of frontrunners, the battle is now between Islamists and felouls – literally “remnants” of the old regime.
That sharp divide has allowed Abou el-Fotouh, a physician by training who is married to gynecologist, to stand out as a more nuanced character. He certainly is an Islamist. Abou el-Fotouh served for 25 years on the leadership body of Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood – the oldest and most well-organized Islamic group in the region--before parting ways with the group last year.
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