So far, so good. Egyptians are voting, and it still takes place in the shadow of the military and the
Mubarak constitution, yet it seems that irregularities are at a minimum. Nightwatch puts it in perspective:
The bottom line is that for the first time in 7,000 years,
Egyptians voted for their head of state and will not know who it is until the
votes are counted. This was a genuine choice and the first time that the
identity of the country's leader will have been determined by a popular vote,
hopefully, and not by not heredity, accidental death,military coup d'etat or
military manipulation.
It ain't a
liberal democracy. It may even be an end to the overinflated hopes of the "revolution". But for Egypt it's a step to something new.
Update (29 May): It looks like it's less rosy than it first appeared. The runoff will be between the former prime minister and the official candidate of the
Muslim Brotherhood. I suspect Prime Minist Shafiq is there, in part, due to voter fraud, coupled with fratricide among the other candidates. Seven protests have been filed, but four have been rejected for technical reasons and the others are from the fringe candidates. More important, perhaps, more than half of the potential voters in Egypt don't seem to have voted at all. Compare that to the first real election after the fall of Saddam, where people stood in line for hours and 62 percent of registered voters participated in selecting the Council of Representatives. When a "revolution for democracy" is followed by a first presidential election in which half the voters don't bother to show up, that's an indication that the revolution has a pretty narrow base of support.
