Egyptian expatriates had their first experience of voting in democratic presidential elections this week, reports Doaa El-Bey Egyptian expatriates were the first to vote in Egypt's first democratic presidential elections this week, though only a portion of those who had registered to vote in fact took part. Out of the 586,820 expatriates who registered last month to take part in the elections, some 80,000 actually took part in the voting, which closed yesterday at 8pm local time. The voting saw an expectedly high turnout in the Gulf countries and a relatively low turnout in Europe and America, in some countries being lower than the turnout among expatriates for last year's parliamentary elections. The results of voting will be released before the start of the elections in Egypt, due on 23 and 24 May, and will be announced at press conferences held in countries hosting Egyptian expatriate voters. The results will then be sent to the Foreign Ministry in Cairo, which will pass them on to the Presidential Elections Commission (PEC). Voting for expatriates started on 11 May and ended on 17 May in all countries. A second round of voting takes place from 3 to 9 June. Samer Morgan, a surgeon who has been living in England for over 15 years, said the process had been straightforward. He had registered through the elections website, prepared the necessary documents, and sent them by post. Although he had not needed to contact the embassy for information, some of his acquaintances had, and they had found the staff to be very helpful. Enjy El-Naggar, a translator in London, described her first voting experience as being really exciting. "Unlike in the parliamentary elections, the voting process went smoothly and without complications. The turnout was definitely bigger than in the parliamentary elections, as this time we were choosing people we knew well," she said. Safwat Ayoub, director of the South-North Forum, a think tank, in Canada, cast his vote at the Egyptian embassy in Ottawa, where a polling station had 5,800 registered Egyptian-Canadians residing in the Ottawa area. "I must say that the organisation of the polling station had greatly improved since the parliamentary elections," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. However, Ayoub was the only person in the embassy when he cast his vote, and he said that of the 300,000 or so Egyptians in Canada, only 12,000 had registered, leaving a lot to be desired. Mohamed El-Meneisi, head of expatriate affairs at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, ascribed the low turnout to the PEC's decision that voters must use the national ID card as a means of identification. The Foreign Ministry had tried to argue that voters should be allowed to use their national ID number, found on recent electronic birth certificates, but the PEC did not accept this. As a result, "only 1/6 or 1/7 of registered expatriates took part in the elections, and the turnout was the highest in the Gulf, where expatriates are able to visit Egypt every year and get the needed national ID card," El-Meneisi said. This explains the ordeal of Ashraf, a labourer in Saudi Arabia, who had to wait in a long queue in front of the Egyptian embassy to cast his vote. "I preferred to go on Friday, the first day of the elections. Besides, I do not work on Fridays, so I had time to wait. But I did not expect it to be that crowded," he said. More than 30,000 expatriates cast their votes in the presidential elections in Saudi Arabia, followed by over 24,000 in Kuwait, some 20,000 in the UAE, nearly 5,000 in Qatar and more than 2,000 in Bahrain. The number of expatriates in Europe and the US casting their votes did not go beyond the 2,000, with some 1,700 in the US and fewer than 1,000 in Canada. Amani Mohamed, who lives in France, was frustrated that she would not be able to vote because she does not have an ID. She was even more frustrated when she found out that the rules had been changed at the last minute and that she could have voted with her passport. "By the time they allowed us to use passports as ID, it was too late for me to take part. I had not registered my name during the registration period, so it was very frustrating," she said. The Foreign Ministry announced on Friday morning, the first day of the expatriate elections, that it had received new instructions from the PEC that allowed expatriates to cast their votes using their passports and attaching a copy of them with their voting card without the need to provide a national ID number or a copy of it. This could only be done on condition that the voter was already officially registered, however, registration having been open for expatriates from 5 March to 11 April. After that date no one was allowed to register, and, without pre-registration, expatriates could not participate in the elections. However, the change in the rules worked in favour of Nevine Khalil, a Weekly staff member currently in the US. She was keen to take part in the presidential elections after she missed the voting window for the parliamentary elections last year because she had not received the information quickly enough. Khalil made sure that she had the documents early this time, and she printed out the ballot sheet and filled it in ready to be posted in the one-week window. However, there was still a snag, as she didn't have her ID card because she had left it in Cairo, so she immediately sent for a photocopy of it. "I was annoyed, because I felt that I was going to miss a historic opportunity for expatriates to vote after the revolution," she said. That would have been the end of the story had she not been told a few days later that the rules had been changed and she could now send a photocopy of her passport instead. "Three days before the ballots closed, I ran out, bought an A4 envelope to hold all the documents, wrote down the address of the Egyptian consulate in Chicago, and went to the post office to send it express, registered, certified, confirmed delivery, signature, and anything else that would guarantee that my vote would be received and counted," Khalil said. The controversy over the right of Egyptian expatriates to vote dates back to April last year, when the cabinet announced that Egyptians living overseas should be allowed to vote in the presidential elections and referendums at embassies and consulates abroad as part of the amendments to the law on political participation. In October, an administrative court ruled that Egyptians living abroad had the right to cast ballots in the parliamentary polls. One month later, Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) passed a law regulating expatriate voting in parliamentary and presidential elections and in referendums, allowing them to vote in embassies and consulates of the countries in which they live. The bottom line, according to El-Meneisi, is that the 25 January Revolution gave Egyptians the legal right to vote, and now it is the turn of all Egyptians to use it.
