CAIRO - In a real test of democracy, about 50 million Egyptians will head on Wednesday and on Thursday to the ballot boxes to pick their president. This is an unprecedented and historic event, as the country's top post was always occupied by a military man for the past 60 years. In 27 governorates, people are going to vote for candidates whom they have classified into three categories: the feloul, the revolutionaries and the Islamists. A total of 14,509 judges will supervise the elections, while some observers from the Carter Centre and some NGOs will monitor the voting process, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported yesterday. The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and security officials stress that the elections will be secure, adding that everything has been taken care of, while the seals of the ballot boxes can't be forged and every voting form has a special code number. Many of the 13 candidates say that they will send representatives to guarantee the elections are fair and democratic. “We have representatives in the committees at polling stations in 16 governorates and there is no way the elections can be rigged,” Hamdeen Sabbahi, one of the presidential candidates, said on Saturday, adding that his campaign will know the election results, before they are sent to the Higher Presidential Elections Commission (HPEC). After the two days of voting, the subcommittees will do the counting. The HPEC pointed out that voting will be held from 8am to 8pm at all the polling stations nationwide. The Army will fly judges to remote governorates, such as North Sinai, South Sinai, the New Valley, Aswan and the Red Sea. The electoral silence began on Monday and continues on Tuesday, with every candidate banned from campaigning in these two days. Judge Hatem Bagato, the Secretary-General of the HPEC, said that the Commission has done everything necessary to ensure the elections are fair and transparent. The Commission believes in the importance of communication with the mass media, which have an important role to play in raising public awareness about the voting, added Bagato, explaining that the Commission has decided to apply the rule of "a judge for every ballot box". Bagato denied statements on some websites about the rigging of the elections at some polling stations, where overseas Egyptians voted last week. Bagato said the database of the voters is based on their ID cards, as per amendments which were introduced into the law on exercising political rights. Meanwhile, some people have warned that they will demonstrate if their candidates aren't elected. Public figures called yesterday for respecting the results of the elections, even if the president is an Islamist. “Egyptians should respect the results of the elections whoever the winner is,” Amr Hamzawi, an MP, told reporters at a meeting with a US Congress delegation, adding that the delegation expressed its satisfaction about the imminent elections. He expects that there will be a runoff, as some of the candidates are very popular. Recent opinion polls suggest that Egyptians are still largely undecided about their favoured candidate and the vote will be a close one that will probably lead to a runoff. More significantly, at least 40 per cent of voters have indicated they are still undecided, suggesting confusion and division over distinct ideologies.
