"Allah save Egypt," said the banner running on the bottom of the screen of the Al Arabiya news channel.

"It doesn´t matter who is elected. The main thing is that he´ll protect Egypt," a fellah from the Dakahlia Governorate, northeast of Cairo, told a reporter from a state television channel.

Then Hajja Fatma, a veil covering her entire face, told the reporter what was meant by saving, or protecting, Egypt: "We have no security. Every day there are attacks against people in the neighborhood, and there are absolutely no police, no one to turn to for help. They hurt old people, rob homes, and kidnap children for ransom. Allah, Allah, we need order."

Al Jazeera showed a group of men boiling coffee over an open fire. One man had a machete in one hand, another held a club and a third stirred the coffee. "These men decided to protect their neighborhood," the reporter explains. The men, who wear long, dress- like abayas and are from a poor neighborhood, say they were fed up with there being no one to protect the citizens. "By the time the police or the army arrive, the criminals are gone. That´s why we´re here."

Personal security, job security and food security are the overriding concerns of Egypt´s citizens. The question being asked in the election this weekend is not which of the presidential candidates can better provide these needs but rather, which is the better salesman.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and police officers were deployed to keep the peace at and around polling places, and so far voting has gone smoothly - a few crossed-out ballot slips here, a few civilians wearing army uniforms and impersonating soldiers there, and one group of April 6 movement members that was campaigning illegally against Ahmed Shafik, the candidate perceived as representing the "ancient regime" because he served as prime minister at the end of the Mubarak regime.

Beyond a runoff election between Shafik and the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, the race is seen as a battle between the "supporters of the secular, civil state" and the "defenders of the revolution," respectively. Morsi represents Egypt´s historic turnaround, during which the Muslim Brotherhood broke free from its designation as a prohibited movement, given by Gamal Abdel Nasser and persisting through the Sadat and Mubarak regimes, to become a legal party that controlled the parliament up until its dissolution on Friday by order of the constitutional court.

But the Muslim Brotherhood´s release from its bounds is the nightmare of everyone who wants a secular, civil Egypt and dreads its becoming a sharia state. The paradox is that those who support the democratic process, the regime change, the elimination of the remainders of the old regime, cannot support Shafik. But anyone who aspires to a liberal, secular state cannot give their vote to the Muslim Brotherhood. And so activists from the protest movements - young, educated, secular - find themselves casting their votes alongside old men with heavy beards, mosque beggars and veiled housewives, for Morsi, "for the sake of the revolution."

Their opposite number - young, educated, secular - try to persuade people to vote for the candidate of "the civil state," the man who until a year and a half ago was the prime minister of the dictatorship.

Until the polls close tonight, the election is a battle of images and reputations. The homepage of the Muslim Brotherhood website features hugely funny YouTube videos from young, secular stand-up comedians. In one clip Salah El Daly admits, "We have no choice but to support ..." then comes to the edge of the stage, holding a shoe with a rolled-up photo of Shafik that he shows the audience and then puts on. The laughter of the audience attests to its feelings about the candidate. There are no clips that make fun of Morsi. No one makes fun of "the candidate of the revolution."

While the two candidates represent opposing ideologies, each knows that if he tries to rule by his respective ideology, he risks facing protests that will topple him. The results of the first election round were divided almost equally between supporters of the religious- revolutionary ideology and of the secular state. Both Morsi and Shafik won around a quarter of the vote, with the remainder divided among religious and secular candidates.

The tension in Egypt will reach its peak when the polling stations close and the counting begins. But a winner has already been declared: the constitutional court. In overturning the Political Exclusion Law, meant to bar senior officials in the Mubarak regime from politics for 10 years, the court sanctioned Shafik´s candidacy; that, together with forcing the dissolution of parliament after finding the election campaign unconstitutional, placed Egypt at the top of a roller coaster. For a moment, a new revolution seemed imminent. Would the Muslim Brotherhood, which lost the most in the ruling, take to the streets, or would it accept the verdict and behave like genuine democrats? Would the protest movements reoccupy Tahrir Square, or would they bite their tongues and recognize that the court based its ruling on amendments they themselves had demanded? Everyone agreed to changing the parliamentary election process, and it was the discrimination embodied in the exclusion law that led to its being found unconstitutional.

In the end, the constitutional process won. The Muslim Brotherhood accepted the ruling, and the protest movements did not take to the streets. Everyone recognizes that this was more than just a legal interpretation. The head of the constitutional court is Farouk Sultan, who was appointed in 2009 by then President Hosni Mubarak. His appointment set off a major controversy because it went against the accepted practice of naming the longest-serving appeals court judge to the post. His decision last week may have been a parting gesture - he retires later this month - on behalf of the old regime.

But all this is not really important. Accepting the authority of the constitutional court marks the success of the Egyptian method. The fact that no one in Cairo has yet suggested adopting the Israeli method and passing a law to bypass the constitutional court may be the best guarantee that Egypt, regardless of its president, will continue to be a state of institutions that balance each other out. (© Copyright 2012 Ha´aretz 06/17/12)