Everyone has an interpretation of what the campaign means but people get tongue-tied when you ask: "Have the elections inspired you to think more about politics?" Tarek Atia unties a few knots Despite all the campaigning, nothing much has happened. People are just as disinterested in politics as they were before the sudden appearance of gigantic billboards advertising Mubarak 2005 instead of the latest pop star's song. For many, the three-week circus -- a virtual whirlwind of candidates and campaign rallies, sly insults and wild promises -- lost its charm well before it was halfway through. The first ever multi-candidate campaign process did change basic attitudes about electioneering, at least at the couch potato level. One lazy observer said, "A lot of people I know have begun to mull over the idea of voting, or perhaps participate in the process in some way -- but the concept is still lukewarm." In conversations across Cairo, Ayman Nour was widely cited as showy but with guts. Al-Wafd attracted some attention -- a party many were sure "had died," the observer said, "until I saw those 'we're suffocating' ads. They're sure to wake things up a bit, make people understand there's something called opposition." But the overwhelming feeling about the election itself is one of ambivalence. "We already know what's going to happen," was second only to "what difference would it make?" in answer to the question, "Are you going to vote?" Maybe people had already read Al-Destour 's Sunday night headline (the newspaper came out two days early this week), which guaranteed a 72 per cent victory for the president -- three days before the 7 September vote. It was that feeling of certainty, of one's vote not having any possible effect on the process, that made most people disinterested; despite the radio and TV ads that made it seem like voting was a way to fulfill your dreams; and despite Al-Azhar and Pope Shenouda endorsing the vote as a religious duty. The election's pre-destined nature was the primary turnoff. While Al-Destour may have been predicting that no other candidate would be "allowed" more than 10 per cent of the vote, much of the general public was staying away from the racetrack in the first place. People think politics is semi-illegal, or will get them in trouble somehow. Either that, or like tourism instructor Haitham Youssri, they have "more important things to do. I've got to feed my kids and run after my daily bread." There are differing theories as to why the connection is rarely made between "seeking out one's daily bread" and participating in the political process. A popular one goes, "every time the government wants to divert people's attention from a political issue, they raise the price of basic goods so that people will think only of meeting their needs, with no time for anything else." People, Youssri says, feel like "it's a matter of 'every man for himself'. They don't trust the government, they don't trust the opposition and they don't trust the religious authorities. So who do they trust?" Similar soul-searching is taking place on-line as we speak, where a lively blog-based debate is trying to decide whether this attitude should be called apathy or selfishness. For those actually considering going to the polls, painstaking attempts were made to rationalise a difficult situation. One suggestion revealed the basic voter's need to feel like their voice really does matter. "Even if you know Mubarak is going to win," it went, "maybe it would be useful to vote for one of the other guys just to swing the balance a little bit even if you didn't like any of them." "The public has always been political," says Abdel-Gelil Ibrahim, a media veteran who was intricately involved in the Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat political and economic scenes. "But people need to see something go right so they can grab hold of it. If they see something go right they will become serious and participate." These days, Ibrahim says, "people think of politics in terms of 'ibaad an al-shar wa ghaneelo'" (literally, "stay away from evil and sing to it"). Thus there's lots of witty criticism of candidates' economic promises: Mubarak's 4.5 million jobs, El-Oqssori's social justice insurance fund, etc, but never any subsequent attempt to delve into how a president's economic agenda, for instance, might affect the voter or how now, in theory at least, there is a chance to hold that person accountable for their actions, or lack of them. In Assiut, when Mubarak asked the audience for their vote, it set off a global news agency analytical gasp -- and may have produced the desired effect in Washington as well, judging from a recent congressional delegation's virtual fawning over the election process. But what many have described as the president's major shift in attitude towards voters may take time to produce a corollary change in expectations amongst them. "Almost everybody would be excused for not getting it at first," says Dalia Badawi, a dentist. "After all, accountability is a relatively alien concept." Badawi related the story of a doctor who once tried, prior to a major surgical operation, to get patients to sign a document outlining his and their basic rights. Every client who saw the phrase "in case of death" refused to sign the document and went to another doctor on the spot. People still see political participation within the same narrow scope that made them reject the doctor's accountability agreement. They feel it's akin to messing with fate. Analysts are hoping that won't be the case with the parliamentary elections in November; they cite the attention being given to the various political parties by the presidential campaign -- however much of a farce they consider the campaign itself to be -- as a possible catalyst of a far more vibrant election process. "People might eventually get in5volved on a more local level," said one parliamentary expert, "demanding their basic rights: that their representative defend their district's interests." The example he gave came from the Bab Al-Louq district downtown, where former independent MP Ragab Helal Hemeida's popularity soared when he made a major fuss in parliament about a brand new bus terminal suddenly being converted into a parking lot for a government institution. He was later barred from parliament on an election results technicality, but will probably run for the same seat from the Ghad Party platform, of which he is now a leading member. But while Hemeida and his party boss, the flamboyant Nour, may play the theatre of politics to great effect, they represent only a very small percentage of parliamentarians looking to be stars. A great many of the assembly's members are legitimately trying to defend their districts' rights, the expert said, "but the biggest group are busy doing personal favours for constituents. This is especially true in rural areas where MPs are deluged with requests to 'find a job for a constituent's son.' If he doesn't, when elections come around, people start to ask, 'so where was he before?'" A shift from that kind of personal politicking may still be a long way away. If anything, the expert says, a change in the local political scene may only go as far as the same sort of superficial makeover given to the presidential political process. "That might not be a good thing since it only provides false hopes, multiplying people's cynicism and apathy when it doesn't come true." Still, it may be only a matter of time before the public -- simultaneously inspired and disgusted by the new choices they're seeing -- demands to play a more useful political game. Either that or continue to keep a safe distance.
