CAIRO - Braving bad weather, rain-flooded streets and fears of insecurity, millions of Egyptians on Monday headed to 3,809 polling stations in nine governorates to cast their ballots on the first day of Phase One of the first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls, amid hopes for a speedy transition and a clear resolve on the part of the voters to move ahead to a long-awaited democracy. Voters formed long queues outside polling stations in the governorates of Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Damietta, Kafr el-Sheikh, Luxor, Assiut, Fayoum and the Red Sea. Some of them were voting for the first time in their lives, in the full certainty that vote-riggers would not be allowed this time to either decide the results of the elections or Egypt's future. “This is the first time I am sure that the vote will not be rigged,” said Mona Farid, a 43-year-old schoolteacher, waiting in a long queue outside a polling station in the poor neighbourhood of el-Sayyeda Zeinab, southern Cairo. “This is the first time I am sure that my vote will count,” she told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. On the fence round the polling station (a school) behind her, there was a torn photo of Fathi Sorour, a Mubarak crony who made el-Sayyeda Zeinab a no-go area for candidates opposed to the former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) from1984 until 2010. This torn photo is a living proof of the sweeping changes that have taken place in Egypt since a popular uprising ousted Hosni Mubarak in February and ushered in new political realities. Beside what was left of Sorour's photo, a grim reminder of the political monopoly Mubarak and his henchmen imposed on this nation for 30 years, the photos of newer fresh-faced candidates held pride of place. Some of them are being fielded by the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Freedom Party, others by Salafist parties like Al-Nour and Al-Asala. Ideology, however, was not the main concern for the people who converged in their thousands on this polling station. One of these was Mohie Reda, a shop owner in his late sixties. He got there early and managed to get a place near the front of the queue. He voted early, as he had to hurry up and open his grocery store round the corner for his customers. “We are all Egyptians,” Reda said after he'd voted, standing behind the marble counter in his shop. “The most important thing is for us to achieve stability.” ‘Stability' seemed to be the trump card in the electoral process yesterday, as most of the voters expressed their hopes that the new Parliament would be a good step on Egypt's way to a new constitution and also the presidential elections, slated for June next year. It was also the trump card for the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which deployed tens of disciplined-looking soldiers, commanded by senior officers, outside each polling station, to quell the public's fears that the elections could turn ugly, as they have in the past. The SCAF, which insisted on holding the elections on time, also used Air Force planes to fly judges monitoring the vote to and from remote polling stations; after the voting, it also flew the ballot boxes to the vote counting centres. “These elections will push Egypt along the road to democracy,” said Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr at a press briefing at the Foreign Ministry. “They send a clear message to the world that Egypt is committed to the democratic transition timeline it has set for itself.” A few yards away from the Ministry, there was a determined atmosphere in polling stations in the poor neighbourhood of Boulaq Abul Ela, where thousands of voters stood patiently in long queues to cast their ballots. The message was clear but this time on the part of the voters, not on the part of the Egyptian State. The voters, most of them poor workers and their wives, expressed their pride to be taking part in the elections. They were echoing Prime Minister-designate Kamal el-Ganzouri's comments, as he said the world bore witness to the determination of the Egyptians to take part in the elections. This determination amounted to the biggest turnout in Egypt's electoral history. The judges monitoring the vote even ran out of election boxes, according to Justice Abdel-Mo'ez Ibrahim, who heads the Higher Election Commission, a group of senior judges overseeing the elections. Ibrahim said all 18,536 election boxes set aside for the Phase One of the elections were filled up yesterday. He had to send for an extra 3,000 boxes. However, he did not say whether extra boxes would be needed today, the second day of voting in the first election phase. But observers say this is likely, as more and more voters are expected to show up to cast their ballots. Active NGOs participation While the Higher Election Commission shunned local NGOs from monitoring the vote, only allowing them to watch the process itself, these NGOs sent thousands of executives and researchers to polling stations in the nine governorates of Phase One. Some organisations had even resorted to exit polls to get an idea of what the election results would look like. The organisations sent reports to the media commenting on the huge voter turnout yesterday, with some of them describing this turnout as the biggest in Egypt's history. In Helwan, south of Cairo, some NGOs reported fighting among the voters. In some polling stations, the voters were not allowed to enter, the NGOs reported. Even with this, some of these organisations described the elections as a “celebration” for Egyptian lovers of democracy. Expatriates' votes counted Meanwhile, Egyptian embassies in several world countries were busy sorting out the votes of Egyptian expatriates, who cast their first-ever ballots in the ongoing parliamentary elections at home. Polling stations, held in the embassies, closed at midnight on Sunday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Up to 166,000 nationals living abroad, about one-third of whom are in Saudi Arabia, had registered to vote, and the overall turnout was expected to exceed 100,000 voters. The defunct Mubarak regime had constantly maintained a ban depriving millions of Egyptians living abroad from the right to vote in any election. The trend was overturned by an administrative court in October and earlier this month Egypt's Justice Ministry agreed to a constitutional amendment to allow expats to vote in their countries of residence. In Belgium, up to 180 people, out of 290 who had registered, had voted, while the Egyptian General Consul in Vienna, Ahmed Sherif, said yesterday they were counting the votes, according to the official MENA news agency. Egyptian expatriates' votes were also being counted in Lebanon, Iraq, Nigeria, Kuwait, Russia and other countries, and have already been sorted out in China and Yemen. "The dream of Egyptians living overseas to take part in determining the future of their country has come through this historical step [allowing them to vote]," Egypt's Ambassador in Beijing Ahmed Rezq told MENA. It was reported that representatives of the candidates, either parties or independent ones, have been watching the counting. The results of the vote will not be announced, but dispatched to the Higher Election Commission (HEC) at home, after taking all the necessary legal procedures, a source at the Egyptian Embassy in Abuja stressed. He added that some members of the Egyptian community in Nigeria were present at the counting. Expatriates cast their ballots in person, covering long distances to the polling stations, or via e-mail. Amr Emam contributed to this article
