The reason so many people think the elections are just a show, writes Tarek Atia, is because all they can do -- for now -- is just watch Everyone is willing to admit that the Egypt we are seeing today -- on TV, in the papers, on the street -- is very different, more open and freer than before. But is that proverbial democratic cup half full or half empty? The dynamic at a Noaman Gomaa campaign rally provides a few clues. The Wafd Party candidate has been making major waves with his "We're suffocating" ad campaign that has appeared on the back pages of almost every newspaper -- government, independent and opposition alike. The rally takes place in Helwan, a working class suburb on the southern outskirts of Cairo. After the typical campaigner's praise for the locals, Gomaa launches into his basic message: "privatisation is the government's way of selling off the public's rights." The large, multi-coloured cloth tent is packed with people. Lines of red, blue and yellow light bulbs give off a circus-like air. A supporter with a microphone in hand interrupts the presidential candidate every few minutes, cutting in with chants like " Yala ya Wafd, kifaya ghorba, bokra hatoh-kom Qasr Al-Qobba! " (Let's go Wafd, you've been away too long, tomorrow you'll be the ruler of Qobba Palace!") The podium Gomaa is standing behind is adorned with a crescent and a cross. There's a lot of press around, and what -- at first -- appear to be hordes of Gomaa supporters. A closer look, however, makes it clear that most people are just here out of curiosity. Some are looking for a good time; some want to be on TV. "Who's that?" a woman in the audience asks her husband, pointing at Gomaa. Gomaa, meanwhile, keeps saying the same thing over and over again. "Don't sell Egypt in the name of privatisation and a liberal economy, and end up getting rid of the workers, and then claim you're on the workers' side." He lists specific public companies that he says were sold for a fraction of their price. The chant-master cuts in again. "How much was the commission? How much did the government take?" A shout emerges from the audience: "And the solution, ya rayyis (boss)? "We're not against privatisation," Gomaa says, "as long as it's done properly, transparently, and the shares are sold to Egyptians, not foreigners." With a week of campaigning left, Gomaa is already losing his voice. Desperately trying to sell the Wafd as a people's party, he says he wouldn't mind if the People's Assembly ended up being 100 per cent workers and farmers (not just the mandated 50 per cent), as long as they are "real workers and farmers, not the ones who are taking naps in parliament and agreeing to everything the government says." When he adds that workers and farmers have the right to 50 per cent of ministerial seats, and that they should also get villas in the Mediterranean coastal resort of Marina, chants of " Allahu akbar " emerge. "It's all about democracy," someone in the audience says. But is it really? In another time and place, the things Gomaa is saying -- about public companies being sold for peanuts and workers being thrown out on the streets -- might have inspired a riot, or at least some sort of public action towards righting what would appear to be a grave wrong. Now, though, most people are just watching, mouths wide open at the spectacle they are seeing for the first time. The public's inability to move does not surprise Hesham Khalil, an employee at a large investment bank. "People are not used to exercising whatever power they have," he says, "because for 50 years or more they have been programmed to just sit around and do nothing." The candidates themselves seem to encourage that apathy by continuing to talk to voters in mostly classical Arabic, ignoring the fact that a large percentage of the population is illiterate. Or by making promises that don't seem very realistic. Candidate Rifaat El-Agroudi, for instance, has promised to jump- start a nuclear weapons programme within a year of taking office. Another contender, Mamdouh Qenawi, says he'll make Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail prime minister. The sight of so-called presidential candidate Ahmed El-Sabahi, sitting in front of a pink and gold wedding-style kosha platform, red fez on his head, has also inspired plenty of laughter. El-Sabahi told the handful of people who showed up for one of his "campaign rallies" that if he wins, he would hand over the presidency to incumbent Hosni Mubarak "who is wiser than all of us, and is like Saad Zaghloul and the pharaohs, because he taught us all democracy." While El-Sabahi's candidacy is surely the looniest -- he's 91 years old -- there have been other cynicism-inspiring moments as well. Like when Gomaa, upset about a heckler's refusal to shut up, told one of his aides, live on TV, "get that [expletive deleted] out of here." Or when the Ghad Party's Ayman Nour had his podium give out from under him, prompting the pundits to exclaim -- en masse -- that Nour would probably blame the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) for the mishap. Also on the campaign trial, NDP candidate Mubarak told a large audience that he had "come to Assiut seeking out your vote". It was definitely the key phrase of the week, making even the staunchest of opposition figures, Abdallah El-Sinnawi, the chief editor of Al-Arabi newspaper, admit, live on TV, that some good has come out of what he would otherwise label a farce. El-Sinnawi specifically mentioned Mubarak's reaching out to voters, asking them to choose him. El-Sinnawi and other pundits have been torn between acknowledging that some sort of democratic process is going on, and an insistence that a moribund political situation was far from being resolved. A blogger who put a photo of the ballot card on his site -- with its quaint boxes decorated with the colorful symbols of each candidate -- along with the comment, " Ayl shiyaka dee? " (How chic...), may have said it best. His sarcasm, much the way one might refer to a finely dressed individual who is empty of substance inside, is a jab at how democracy shouldn't just be a show. That may also be part of what columnist Fahmi Howeidi meant when he described the elections as a "cheater's form of democracy", comparing them to a student who hasn't studied all year, who suddenly decides, on the night before the test, that he has to pass. Ahmed Farghali, a pharmacist from Damietta, compared the campaign to an auction where the strongest bidder places fake bidders in the audience to raise the price to a certain level before he comes in with the price that wins. "All that the candidates are proving," he said, "day after day, is how weak they really are." In fact, as the campaign entered its second week, people were talking less about the details of the candidates' platforms and promises than about how the election process itself might interrupt their ordinary routines. Parents were exchanging gossip that the first day of school had been delayed because of the poll. Mobile messages were circulating concerns that there would be trouble on the streets on 7 September, and that people should avoid going out that day. Asked whether he was going to vote, accountant Khalid Ibrahim's answer -- that it didn't matter either way because "we all know who's going to win; it's only a question of seeing how close they're going to make it look" -- is an interesting case in point. Ibrahim's view, shared by many, makes clear that the public is convinced that since they've been treated like sheep for so long, they are still being treated the same way now, and that they really have no power to change things. But the real reason they are treated like sheep, as columnists like Al-Dustour's feisty Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Eissa constantly point out, is because they allow themselves to be. It's easier for elections to be rigged when only a small percentage of the population actually cares enough about the issue to do something about it. If people are sick of the farce, why don't they realise that this is their chance to change it? There's no point in not voting, after all, and then complaining that the elections were rigged. How can you tell if you didn't even try to make a difference? Khalil, the investment banker, and others, think it is way too early to tell whether the public will ever realise that they can, and should, have more of a stake in what's going on, that they need not only be observers but participants as well. "The whole thing started in February with the amendment of Article 76," Khalil says. "We're only in August. It might take years for things to change." During a visit to the US earlier this year, when Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif insinuated that a large portion of the Egyptian public did not have the necessary political maturity to appreciate the nuances of a fully-fledged democratic process, independent and opposition critics slammed him for belittling the entire population. Actually, Nazif might have been even more off the mark than the pundits thought. For Khalil, participatory democracy is less about political maturity than changing people's tastes. "Everybody here is used to eating garbage," he says. "If you give them caviar, the first thing they'll say is, 'this tastes funny.'"
