During the Parliamentary elections in 2011, I worked as an election observer in the Northern governorate of Beheira and Marsa Matrouh on the Libyan border. In both places, I visited many small towns and hamlets.
The only political parties I saw with any consistency there were the Freedom and Justice Party (the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm) and the Salafi Noor Party. They had the numbers, they were on the streets. At the time, those who later came to become the opposition said the Islamists had an unfair advantage: they had been organized for years, these people said; they had existing charity networks; they had money that allowed them to set up cheap markets to sell meat and other staples at cut rates; they had a natural networks in their mosques, many of which encouraged their congregations to vote for Islamic parties.
The answer, then as now, is suck it up:
if the opposition wants to get through to people in a meaningful way, they too must go to the villages and organize.
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