Egyptians Go to Polls in Landmark Presidential Election
After weeks of fevered debate, speculation and anticipation, Egyptians went to the polls on Wednesday in the country’s first competitive presidential election, waiting in long but mostly orderly lines and savoring their historic opportunity to choose among 13 candidates spanning the nation’s secular and Islamist traditions.
“Egypt will be the horse that will pull the whole Arab nation forward,” said Mohamed Abdel Monsef, 32, a shopkeeper waiting to vote in the impoverished neighborhood of Imbaba.
Photographers and camera men thronged to capture the five leading candidates - two Islamists, two former ministers from the government of Hosni Mubarak, and a Nasserite socialist - entering ordinary polling stations around Cairo to slip their ballots into clear plastic boxes and then dip their fingers into blue ink like other voters. The school where Mr. Mubarak and his wife used to be filmed walking a red carpet to cast their ballots in his predetermined re-elections has been closed for voting this year, state media reported.
Mr. Mubarak, who was deposed 15 months ago as the Arab Spring began to stir revolt in many parts of the Arab world, is now awaiting a verdict in early June on charges of enriching himself in office and having protesters killed during the uprising.
In the neighborhood of Heliopolis, Salwa Abdel Moneim, 62, waved a blue-inked finger she earned after what she said was a wait of two and a half hours. “Despite the chaos and the wait, I am happy,” she said. “I feel like it is a dream coming true, and I hope that it lasts.”
For some Egyptians, the experience of the presidential campaign - a first of its kind - was already a victory for democracy. “It is enough that the new president will know he could go to jail if he does something wrong,” said Mohamed Maher, 28, waiting to vote in Imbaba.
But others seemed daunted by their responsibility as voters.
“This is our last chance to end this painful period in our lives,” said Amgad Hussein, 43, on a voting line on the affluent island of Zamalek. “If we choose the wrong president we will go in circles.”
In an astonishing departure from the scripted presidential plebiscites of Egypt’s past, the ultimate outcome was shrouded in suspense. Wednesday is the first of two days of voting, with final results likely to take days and a runoff for the top two vote-getters scheduled for next month. With a fluid and shifting field, no reliable polls and a runoff planned next month if no candidate wins a majority, handicapping the race was all but impossible. With some 50 million eligible voters, the country had roughly 13,000 polling stations.
Perhaps the most significant question in the first stage of the vote is the future of the Muslim Brotherhood, the 84-year-old Islamist group that dominated parliamentary elections a few months ago. It is now locked in a struggle over its right to speak as the definitive voice of political Islam as its conservative candidate, Mohamed Morsi, faces off against Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former member who has campaigned as a relative liberal.
The two candidates who held positions under Mr. Mubarak are the former prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, and Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister and Arab League secretary general.
A fifth candidate is the Nasserite, Hamdeen Sabahi, a poet-turned-populist who is campaigning as a political descendant of the leader of the Egyptian revolution of 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser, a former president.
Among the roughly 250,000 Egyptians who voted abroad - the only votes counted so far - Mr. Morsi won the largest share, Mr. Aboul Fotouh the second, and Mr. Sabahi the third. (Some campaigns have contested those results and an inquiry is pending.)
Also unknown is the description of the president’s job. The council of generals that has ruled Egypt since the ouster of Mr. Mubarak has pledged to turn over executive authority after the election. But a political deadlock prevented the Islamist-dominated Parliament from empaneling a constitutional drafting committee as planned, so Egypt lacks a new charter to define the relative duties and powers of the president, Parliament and the military.
The military has promised to relinquish power on July 1.
“With these elections, we will have completed the last step in the transitional period,” Maj. Gen. Mohamed el-Assar said at a news conference on the eve of voting, Reuters reported. Despite such assurances, many Egyptians suspect that the military, deeply embedded in the nation’s economic life, will maintain much influence. Egypt’s future is also being closely watched outside the country, particularly in the West and in Israel, in case Islamists make further gains that could jeopardize Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, a cornerstone of Washington’s regional policy.
Earlier this year, Egyptians voted in parliamentary elections, now seen as something of a dry run because under the country’s military rulers the Parliament has turned out to have little power. Some voters say they regret supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates won that election.
Across the nation, thick layers of campaign posters cover walls, while banners hang from billboards and trees.
One of the biggest issues is the pervasive lawlessness that has become the biggest change in daily life since last year’s revolution. Such random, violent crime was almost unheard-of when the police state was strong.
All the presidential candidates have said they will make law-and-order a top priority by getting the police back to work, restoring the force’s morale and teaching its officers about human rights. But while the two leading Islamist contenders talk about reforming the police force, Mubarak-era officials in the running emphasize cracking down with a strong hand.
source.