Though official results of voting by Egyptian expatriates in the presidential election have not been released, the figures quoted in local press projections and reports,putting the figure at 800 thousand out of a total of nearly 8 million Egyptians abroad, should not pass unnoticed, in both political and intellectual perspectives. To begin with, our expatriates have for long been passionately seeking to exercise, in their countries of domicile, the right to vote in all homeland general elections. Wherever they went abroad, our officials and politicians frequently heard pleas by Egyptian communities for enjoying this particular right which they correctly considered natural and fundamental. Doubtlessly, the election of the country's first president in post-Revolution Egypt represents the peak of the transformation to democracy, apart from being in itself an event of the utmost political significance. So for only 800 thousand of our 8 million expatriates to participate in such a major event is an observation that implies a cause for serious concern. And the case could turn all the more puzzling and even worrisome if it were finally proven that the turnout in the preceding parliamentary elections was higher than in voting to name the nation's first democratically-elected president in post-Revolution Egypt. In a letter to the electronic edition of the Cairene Al-Ahram newspaper the other day, one expatriate claimed that the obviously low turn-out was a message of discontent over the attitude harboured by political forces and presidential candidates at home towards expatriates. Expatriates, he claimed, are traditionally viewed as either a financier of economic plans or a mere voting bloc. Backing up his argument, he drew in an observation that in no platform of all presidential candidates was there any explicit reference to expatriates as a valuable source of human knowledge and expertise in many a field. While generally understandable, the grievances expressed in that letter could have easily and directly been redressed by expatriates themselves through involving actively in the political process, airing their views and communicating with presidential candidates to incorporate such views into their platforms, replacing the objectionable only-financier-cum-voter image if it really existed. The one point that should be made and highlighted in this context is that the presidential election, coupled with the relevant voting facilities, could have been positively invested by expatriates to promote their views and visions for the future of the homeland. Recognising that the state has adopted intensive and costly measures to ensure that Egyptians living or working abroad can exercise the right to vote in the most convenient manner and in all transparency, it should have been natural to expect massive turnout particularly since expatriates had, before the January Revolution, been critical of the absence of that right. The reported 10 per cent turnout is indeed much lower than expected. Logistical and like-minded considerations should in no way be invoked by way of justifying that percentage, given that many administrative facilities were put in place to make it possible for expatriates to cast ballots even without having to appear in person at Egyptian embassies and consular offices. Also made permissible to facilitate personal identification and eligibility for voting was the acceptance of travel passport data as an alternative for the official ID. It was indeed a shared hope at the national level to see our expatriates reflecting unlimited enthusiasm for participating in the pre-final step of the great and momentous drive to establish true democracy. Egyptian expatriates will therefore stand duty-bound and morally obliged to establish the worthiness of their contribution to the growth of public participation in national political life. One other chance to so act will materialise when a referendum on a new constitution is called, the date of which is yet to be fixed after a new president is sworn-in and a re-formed constituent assembly to write the post-Revolution constitution is instituted.
