Over the last week and a half Cairo has been enveloped by a sense of elation, as the population participated in the initial round of voting for the country’s first free and fair elections in over thirty years. On the 28th and 29th of November voters queued across the capital for up to five hours, at times enduring cold and wet conditions. Lines of people sprawled across the city, winding around buildings, and stretching across roads.
Turnout across the country was high, averaging 62 %, while figures for Cairo itself were significantly higher. Downtown, voters snacked on falafel sandwiches bought from street vendors while in the more upscale neighbourhood of Zamalek, waiters from a nearby branch of Cilantros took orders of Chai Tea and Hazelnut Hot Chocolate from those waiting in line. Some polling stations were women-only while at others there were two queues, segregated by gender, to prevent harassment, an problem endemic in Egypt.
The announcement of the first round results on state television on Friday heralded a much-forecast victory for Islamist groups. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party claimed around 40% of the vote and the ultra-conservative Salafist al-Nour won nearly 25%. The Egyptian Bloc, a newly-formed but well funded coalition of left-liberal parties, came in third place with around 15%, while former members of Mubarak’s NDP did surprisingly poorly.
Most analysts are declaring the election thus far a success, despite numerous acknowledged rule violations including campaigning outside polling stations and the use of religious slogans on campaign materials. Official promises to clam down these activities in subsequent rounds of voting appear to be without weight, as Monday and Tuesday’s run-off elections saw no great change.
Turnout for the run-off elections has been far lower, as is typically the case. However, in the case of Egypt this is particularly worrying given that in only 4 of the 56 Individual Candidate seats up for grabs last week did a candidate win a majority of the vote. The remaining 52 seats will be decided by the smaller percentage of voters who have braved the cold to vote a second time.
Alongside the elections, a rather dilapidated occupation continues in Tahrir Square, where anywhere between several hundred and one thousand protesters are demanding that SCAF cede power to a civilian authority immediately and that Prime Minister Kamal Ganzouri resign.
Many of those present boycotted the election believing that any democratic transition overseen by SCAF cannot have legitimacy, due in part to the fact that over 12,000 political dissenters are still languishing in military jails and therefore unable to vote. Among them is prominent blogger, Alaa Abdel Fattah, imprisoned for allegedly inciting violence against the military during the clashes on October 9th outside Downtown’s Maspero building in which 27 civilians died.
Voting for the People’s Assembly, the lower house of parliament, will continue into January. Beyond that loom elections for the Shura Council (the upper house) and eventually for the presidency. Throughout all of this, the balance will likely continue to shift between the die-hard Tahriri’s who still want to scrap the entire system and rebuild from scratch, and those who want the country to move forward immediately and allow economic recovery to begin.
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