Long Lines Form as Egypt Commences Historic Vote

Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

 

An Egyptian soldier watched as people outside a polling station in Cairo waited to cast their votes on Monday.

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: November 28, 2011

CAIRO — Defying expectations of chaos and violence, unexpectedly  large crowds of voters turned out at dawn Monday to cast their votes in Egypt’s first parliamentary election since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February.

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Clashes in Egypt

By 9 a.m, voters had formed long and peaceful lines under the watchful eyes of a heavy police and army guard to cast votes in rich and poor neighborhoods across Cairo. In several places, queues stretched as long as a block along the banks of the Nile, and there were similar reports from Alexandria and Port Said.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the group that defined Islamist politics, poised to win a dominant role in the Parliament of the country that for nearly six decades was the paradigmatic secular dictatorship of the Arab world.

But the prospect of that historic turn has been largely overshadowed here by another, more urgent contest unfolding outside the voting booths: between the military council that seized power at Mr. Mubarak’s ouster and a resurgent protest movement demanding the council’s exit.
The ruling generals have defied a week of protests to reiterate, more forcefully than ever in recent days, that they expect to yield almost no authority to the new Parliament, and might claim special permanent powers under the new constitution that the Parliament is to write. The council’s top officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, declared on Sunday that “the position of the armed forces will remain as it is — it will not change in any new constitution.”
At the same time, the generals have set a political timetable calling for the Parliament to be seated in March and disbanded perhaps as early as July. They have established a convoluted and opaque voting system that is almost doomed to lack credibility. And nearly everyone expects widespread violence among supporters of rival candidates — a hallmark of past Egyptian elections and a preoccupation of pre-election commentary this time.

“The elections will have no legitimacy,” said Sally Moore, a psychiatrist of Egyptian and Irish descent who was among the young organizers behind the original revolt against Mr. Mubarak.
“It won’t be a working Parliament. It will be a Parliament that people want to overthrow,” she said. “It is a sideshow. But it is being portrayed as a main event, because people want to have some hope. They will end up disappointed.”
Many liberal candidates suspended their campaigns last week because of the protests. Several said they were urging their supporters to go to the polls on Monday just to limit the Islamists’ gains, even at the risk of appearing to legitimize a questionable result.
“I expect a lot of violence,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, a liberal organizer who also took part in the original uprising. “But we are telling people to go and vote, because we don’t want the Islamists to have the whole thing for themselves.” The atmosphere, he said, was “very depressing.”
A widely followed Facebook page that played a crucial role in rallying opposition to Mr. Mubarak captured the deep ambivalence of many of the original revolutionaries. It urged voters to go to the polls dressed in black, in part to mourn the more than 40 people killed last week in clashes with security forces during the protests against military rule.
“We want the elections to be the first white mark in the history of the revolution” but “a black mark on the front of the regime,” the Facebook page, We Are All Khaled Said, declared. “We will go to the elections, because it is the first step on the path of taking power back from the military, who we think should go quickly back to their barracks.”

In interviews, many Egyptians were already looking past the election, which will take place in stages over the next few months. Some said they feared its failure could give the military an excuse to keep power, perhaps under a reshuffled council.
But others argued that even a flawed election would lend the Parliament more legitimacy than street protesters could muster against the power of the military council, and the very act of voting would carry Egypt one step further from dictatorship and closer to democracy.

 

Mayy el Sheikh contributed reporting.