Egyptian presidential election May 23-24

[BrainGlutton]

And today two (not the two) leading candidates squared off in a televised debate (ho-hum here, new thing there). And it quickly got acrimonious.

Former Mubarak-era foreign minister and Arab League chairman Amr Moussa pressed Islamist doctor and former high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood member Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh over the latter's connections to conservative religious groups, suggesting in the end that if his opponent became president it risked a return to insecurity and terrorism.

Aboul Fotouh, who despite occasional shouting matches never seemed to lose his calm, countered that Moussa, as a former member of Mubarak's regime, was incapable of carrying out the goals of the revolution that ousted his boss.

The two are among 13 candidates competing in the election, due to be held on May 23 and 24. Along with the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, they are considered front-runners. Others include Hamdeen Sabahi, a Nasserist MP of the Dignity Party and longtime opposition journalist, and Khaled Ali, a human rights lawyer favoured by many young progressives.

Moussa, who has been campaigning throughout Egypt since Mubarak's fall more than a year ago, is considered to be favoured by secularists, liberals and the so-called "silent majority" of the middle and upper class that eventually came to support the revolution but fears more unrest.

Aboul Fotouh, who left the Brotherhood in 2011 over ideological differences and in order to run for president, has pulled together an unlikely coalition of liberals, socialists, moderate and hardline Islamists and is seen as perhaps the best chance for the politically unaffiliated youth of the revolution to win a voice in the executive branch.

Well, it looks like Egyptian democracy is off to a go- . . . off to a start!