Casting Ballots

A free and presumably fair election finally for Egypt.  Jimmy Carter and his hundreds of scrutineers are there to ensure that he can give a vote of confidence that the election indeed was free and fair.  The question is what will change.  Will, in fact, anything change?  Some people on the street, fed up with insecurity, chaos, growing crime rates and soaring food prices along with unappetizing levels of unemployment have begun to look back on the previous administration with regret at its passing.

But the way forward is assumed to be with the growing momentum to challenge both the military's stubborn grip on power, and now, increasingly the Muslim Brotherhood's obvious ambition to rule both  parliament where it has a clear majority, and the as-yet-undefined position of president.  Voters are angry with the Freedom and Justice Party of the Brotherhood for not having passed any useful legislation in the six months since they won 50% of the seats.  Angry too that despite their promise they would not field a candidate for the executive position, they've done so, revealing their true intentions.

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Egyptian men wait outside a polling center to cast their votes in Imbaba neighborhood in Giza, Egypt, Wednesday, May 23. More than 15 months since the uprising that pushed Hosni Mubarak from power, Egyptians streamed to polling stations Wednesday to freely choose a president for the first time in generations.

Ahmed Ali/AP

It was estimated that 60% of the eligible voters of this country of 82-million people have turned out to vote.  Because Egypt is a country of young people, of that number 50-million are eligible to vote.  The two days of balloting has concluded and the business of counting votes has begun.  Not many have yet been counted, but already the Muslim Brotherhood has stated that, according to their calculations, their candidate is in the lead.  If no one of the thirteen candidates in contention for the presidency succeeds in garnering 50% of the vote, the two leading candidates will have a run-off in July. Tensions and expectations are high because the electorate is truly polarized.  Long lines stretched from polling stations across the country as eligible voters took this opportunity to actually cast a ballot as seriously as it was meant to be taken.  Voting was quiet and orderly, with polls kept open an additional hour to handle the press of eager voters. The writing of the country's new constitution has been delayed.  And with the swearing in of a new president it can be anticipated that it will proceed to completion, with the powers given to the president spelled out clearly.  Despite that the military has signalled that it plans an amendment to ensure that it continues to exert power, and perhaps even extend the amount of power beyond what it now exercises. With the ascension of the new president and the new constitution verified and accepted Egypt should be in a position of facing the challenges of governing itself in a manner to reflect in part what the challenge to the old rule had succeeded in doing; calling for a new system of government where the public can feel it has been given the right to express itself and be heard. There will have been and continue to be disagreements between the military, the leader to follow, and the Islamist-controlled parliament.  It remains to be seen just how much of a departure from the old government the incoming one will represent.  If the Muslim Brotherhood does prevail and exert not only influence from parliament with the support of the Salafists, but also through the position of president, the change will reflect an aura unpleasing to those who took to Tahrir Square in their revolutionary zeal. But this is the Middle East, with all its tribal, ideological, sectarian animosities.  Egypt's Christians will most certainly begin to filter out of their homeland in final numbers with the ascension to office of a Muslim Brotherhood candidate.  Sharia will become the law of the land with strict adherence to the Brotherhood/Salafist version of Islam. How this will influence the other Muslim states in the region is a given.  The rise of Islamism has taken decades to achieve, and it has swept the world of Islam.  It has produced, as an offshoot of its fanaticism, violent jihad with competing and vicious non-governmental militias seeking the downfall of governments throughout North Africa and the Middle East. The Arab Spring seemed a counter to the Islamist agenda; now the outcome of the push for greater freedoms begins to resemble a counterpart to it.