Although the parliamentary elections did change perceptions, the public is still apathetic about politics. Gamal Essam El-Din finds out how Nasser Ahmed, a taxi driver from Cairo's rundown Al-Basateen district, described parliamentary elections day on 9 November as "very normal", not too strange given that Ahmed and his family were unaware that there was an election going on. The number of people who bothered to go out and vote was so small that Ahmed and many others like him felt nothing unusual that day. Ahmed was one of several million Egyptians who abstained from voting in last month's parliamentary polls. They form what political observers and sociologists call "the silent majority". Ahmed believes that as a rule, people who run in parliamentary elections do so for pure personal interests, rather than to serve the people. "The People's Assembly is a joke," said Ahmed. "It's a place where people say 'yes' all the time to what the government wants, and in return they are allowed illicit riches." There is broad agreement among political observers that the results of this year's month-long elections will have mixed results when it comes to the way Egyptians view the People's Assembly and parliamentary life. "The first effect," said Amr El-Choubaki, a political analyst with the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), "is positive. The defeat of a record number of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) candidates and the success of other forces, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood, should have persuaded a lot of people that they have the power to elect whom they want and that their votes count despite all the help that NDP candidates received from the government and security forces." El-Choubaki said that during the first stage of the elections, held in eight governorates from 9 to 15 November, voter turnout stood at just 24 per cent, similar to the rate registered in the 2000 parliamentary polls. "But," he argued, "after a large number of NDP candidates lost, and a record number [34] of Muslim Brotherhood candidates won, the second stage witnessed a larger number of registered voters deciding to go to the polls." As a result, the voter turnout rate in this stage rose to 27 per cent. In the third stage, the voter turnout rate dropped to 26.2 per cent, "due to violence and security forces obstructing a massive number of people from voting." El-Choubaki said that in spite of this, many people took it as a challenge and voted. So determined were they that many used ladders to get into polling stations that were blocked by central security forces. More people go to the polls when they discover that their vote makes a difference, El-Choubaki said. They abstain when they realise the result is a foregone conclusion. This dynamic was clear in September's presidential elections, he said. "The voter turnout was as low as 23 per cent. Even judges in charge of monitoring the elections agreed that the voter turnout did not exceed eight per cent." The fact that the result of the presidential elections was a foregone conclusion -- President Mubarak was re-elected easily -- was a major reason for the very low turnout. Other observers, however, think the increase in voter turnout in the second and third stages of the parliamentary elections, compared to the first one, was due more to the mobilisation tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood. This fact, they added, will change their view of the assembly for the worse. According to Diaa Rashwan, another ACPSS analyst, the drop in voter turnout in the first stage was because it included a number of what he described as upscale governorates such as Cairo and Giza, in which people show a high level of political apathy towards political participation in general and elections in particular. "In Cairo, for example, voter turnout does not usually exceed nine per cent," Rashwan said. The governorates in the second and third stages were no different from Cairo. "But the reason for the change," said Rashwan, "was that when the Muslim Brotherhood clinched the unprecedented number of 34 seats in the first stage, its supporters in the other two stages were heavily mobilised to ensure that the group gained a greater number of seats." This mobilisation included promoting the group's members, men and women, to go in mass numbers to the polling stations and shout Islamic slogans as a way to encourage people to vote in favour of their candidates. NDP businessmen candidates, Rashwan said, also managed to "mobilise" a large number of voters, including poor men and women, to vote for them for money. As a result, Rashwan concludes that as a rule, the elections did not change the way Egyptians view political life and the People's Assembly. "Yes, there were exceptions but they emphasised the rule." In fact, people's perceptions of the People's Assembly might even tilt more to the negative "because there is a general belief that most of the members succeeded thanks to illegal means such as vote-buying, thuggery on a large scale, and rigging as documented by judges," Rashwan said. As such, the poll's one firm result, in Rashwan's view, was the "further alienation of the three-quarters of the population -- the silent majority -- who did not bother to vote." El-Choubaki agrees that most Egyptians are putting little stock in the new Assembly, having clearly seen the violence, security force manipulation, and fraud that went into the process. "But they still equally believe that in spite of police bullying, they were able to elect the candidates they sympathised with. This might have been most clear in the fact that the number of opposition and independent candidates in the assembly has dramatically increased, from a mere 41 to 121, for the first time in parliamentary history. Tanta barber Gomaa Mohamed, for one, said that although he doesn't usually vote, he followed the 2005 parliamentary elections closely, and was "impressed by the large number of seats the Muslim Brotherhood was able to clinch in the first stage." When the second stage came to his town, Mohamed decided to go to the polling station and lend his support to two Brotherhood candidates, one of whom ended up winning. "I didn't do it out of love for the Brotherhood," he said, "as much as hate for the NDP candidates." Mohamed said next time around, he'd decide whether or not to vote when he sees how free the poll will be. El-Choubaki said if non-NDP deputies formed a strong opposition bloc aimed at exerting supervision over the government, fighting corruption and creating a livelier, more effective parliament in general, the public's view of the People's Assembly will change for the better. If that happens, a major chunk of the silent majority might suddenly find their voice.
