It is the time before the presidential elections. Egypt is in the middle of a possible transitional period and a mostly transitional mood. Since I arrived in Cairo in October 2011, people were highly politicized (which does not mean full of revolutionary thoughts) and most of them still are. It was then that I heard for the first time the statement that Egypt´s future will depend on the personality of the new president. This has not changed since.

As a German (we have had bad experiences with so-called “strong” leaders’ personalities) I intuitively disagreed. Is it not known that politicians are egotistic and power-hungry individuals, who can only be useful to the people if the structures in which they operate make use of this condition and set the right stimuli? In other terms: Does not the constitution shape the country and not individual actors inside the system?