Egyptian women wait to cast their votes at a polling station in the Zamalek neighbourhood of Cairo, Nov. 28, 2011. (Getty)The vote is a milestone many Egyptians hope will usher in a democratic age after decades of dictatorship, and CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports the thousands flocking to polling stations in Cairo seemed adamantly determined to cast their vote, with even slight delays to polls opening raising tensions rapidly.
The ballot has already has been marred by turmoil in the streets, and the population is sharply polarized and confused over the nation's direction.
Given the novelty of open elections in Egypt, even the security forces policing the polling stations were struggling to do their jobs within entirely new parameters. Palmer says Army officers grappling with the new concept of transparency weren't sure about allowing the CBS News crew to shoot video of actual voting. The commanding officer at the polling station, however, had been sent for a U.S. military training course in Alabama in the late 1990s.
"Suddenly," says Palmer, "we were given carte blanche."
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In spite of the violence before the polls opened, and the tension as the voting got underway, the vote promises to be the fairest and cleanest election in Egypt in living memory. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best organized group, along with its Islamist allies are expected to do well in the vote.
Voters stood in long lines outside some polling centers in Cairo well before they opened at 8 a.m. local time, a rare sign of interest in political participation after decades of apathy created by the mass rigging of every vote.
"I am voting for freedom. We lived in slavery. Now we want justice in freedom," said 50-year-old Iris Nawar as she was about to vote in the district of Maadi, a Cairo suburb.
"We are afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood. But we lived for 30 years under Mubarak, we will live with them too," said Nawar, a fist-time voter.
Palmer, reporting from a polling station in Cairo, says the situation remained largely orderly as military and police officers tried to organize waiting voters into separate lines based on age and sex.
But when the scheduled opening time passed, voters quickly became agitated and started shouting at the security forces. The country is currently ruled by a military council, and many feel the senior generals - most of whom have held their positions since Mubarak was in charge - have been too slow to transition power to a civilian government.
In the upscale neighborhood of Zamalek, some 500 voters waited in line outside a polling station at a school. Shahira Ahmed, 45, was there with her husband and daughter. Like Nawar, Ahmed had never cast a ballot before.
"I never voted because I was never sure it was for real. This time, I hope it is, but I am not positive. The most important thing is to have a liberal and a civilized country, I mean no fanatics," she said, alluding to the Islamists, who hope their domination of the next parliament will bring them closer to realizing their dream of creating an Islamic Egypt.
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