Egyptian politics are a game of chess without a king

You can tell it's election time in Egypt again, and not just because of the proliferation of billboards, bumper stickers and leaflets touting this or that candidate. It's something in the air.
The two most potent political actors on the scene, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, are exchanging strong words; every day there is a twist and turn, usually involving some technical legality. Everyone is worried the elections might be called off, despite constant reassurances to the contrary. Unlikely political alliances are being made and virtually everyone is trading barbs and accusations of one kind or another.
And, of course, there's that sure-fire sign of an upcoming election: mass protests that degenerate into bloody clashes due to - everyone agrees - unknown "hidden hands" or "third parties" or "fifth columns" or some other shadowy force.
The prevailing mood in Egypt today is just like it was during the parliamentary elections a few months ago: on edge, cautious and overly pessimistic.
Last week, the theatre for this seasonal violence was the Abbassiya neighbourhood in central Cairo, where the ministry of defence is located. It started out as a protest by followers of the disqualified presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail - who are colloquially known as "Hazemoon" - against the exclusion of their man.
A confrontation began, or was provoked, between the protesters and soldiers and it escalated into a full-scale riot, with a dozen dead and hundreds hospitalised. A few days later it all happened again - a few more dead, wounded and arrested.
Maybe it was all an accident, or a misunderstanding, or the inevitable consequence of an almost comically uncertain political transition. Or the introduction of thugs, or enraged local folk the generals like to call "honourable citizens".
Or, as the headline of a newspaper known for its proximity to the security services recently suggested, perhaps it was "a conspiracy to install an Islamic emirate in Egypt". Or maybe the actions of revolutionary subversive elements who want to create havoc by any means …
One could go on.
It is this uncertainty about what is behind the recent clashes, as much as the violence itself (which in any case raises far less outcry than it once did, with much of the public having become jaded) that is unnerving. This uncertainty hangs over everything, from whether Egypt will soon have a constitution (most think this is unfeasible before the end of the year, but the army is insisting upon it) to whether the election will take place at all (everyone says it will, although the commission overseeing the poll recently threatened to suspend its work because it felt parliamentary criticism of its work was insulting).
In most countries, one has a good idea of who the front-runners in any elections are. And, according to polls, two candidates are clearly in the lead: the former secretary general of the Arab League Amr Moussa, and the former (and estranged) Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh. These two men are running the most effective campaigns, it seems.
Mr Moussa is convincing when he boasts that his experience and international network would help instil order into Egypt's affairs from day one, and has the merit of running for a single term, as a transitional president. Perhaps best of all, he appears to be a tolerable candidate for most Egyptians, even if they might hold their noses.
Mr Aboul Fotouh, meanwhile, is the candidate of hope and change, a rare figure who unites the political spectrum - even if his discourse suffers from blurriness as a result.
The rather dull backup candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsy, is taken as a distant third who may stage a last minute surge thanks to the grass-roots clout of the organisation that backs him.
Yet few in the Brotherhood seem to agree with the polls; among his brethren Mr Morsy is seen as a second Abu Bakr Al Siddiq, the first caliph to rule Muslims after the death of Prophet Mohammed, and sure to win.
Mr Morsy's campaign has taken on a stridently fundamentalist tone, with calls for a caliphate clashing with the image of moderation the Brotherhood has spent much of the past year cultivating.
More disturbingly, the Brotherhood's leaders appear to have been thrown off balance by their (thus far, losing) confrontation with the military and the disqualification of their first choice for candidate, Khairat Al Shater. At a recent meeting, one Brotherhood member told me that should the current front-runner, Mr Moussa, win, then the election will have surely been rigged and the Brotherhood will not cooperate with him to form a new government. Another leader implausibly asserted that not only will Mr Morsy win, he will win outright in the first round of voting.
A fourth hopeful, Ahmed Shafiq, is also trailing in the polls but appears (judging from how frequent his advertisements are) to be outspending everybody. He is seen as the generals' favourite candidate, since he once was one of them, and is campaigning on a message of security and order many will find reassuring in these troubled times.
His main problem, though, is that his candidacy appears permanently on-again, off-again. He has been disqualified by a law hurriedly passed by parliament, reinstated by the electoral commission which chose to refer that law to a constitutional court, and now hangs in limbo as another court ruled that the commission did not have the right to refer anything to anyone.
The commission's own decisions, by the way, are controversially supposed to be above appeal.
It is tempting to think that this level of confusion simply reflects the birth pangs of Egyptian democracy, the result of a badly planned and implemented transition. Indeed, there is great hope that the election of a new president, who will have the same popular legitimacy as parliament, will help settle political tempers and encourage compromise and reconciliation for the sake of the country.
Unfortunately, such a happy outcome does not really appear likely. The risk is that much like the parliamentary elections in late 2011 and early 2012, the election of a new president will simply add one more piece to a complicated game of chess, with rules that are strangely elastic.
Much like the recent violence in Cairo, the purpose of the game is unclear. What are the pieces and what might amount to a "victory"? This murkiness will probably be with us for some time.
Issandr El Amrani is an independent journalist based in Cairo who blogs at www.arabist.net