This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/world/middleeast/election-in-egypt.html

The article has changed 10 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Voting Opens in Egyptian Election Lacking Suspense Voting Opens in Egyptian Election Lacking Suspense
(about 3 hours later)
CAIRO — Voters around the capital lined up Monday morning to cast ballots in an election universally expected to make Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the next president of Egypt, turning out to show their support in a contest where turnout is the biggest question. CAIRO — Rasha Hazem has brought her two daughters to 10 national votes in the last three years, letting the girls ink their own fingers each time to practice at democracy.
In an interview on a pro-Sisi talk show Sunday evening, Abdel Aziz Salman, the general secretary of the High Presidential Election Commission, said that voters would be permitted to endorse a candidate by drawing hearts or professing their love on their ballots if they chose. If a voter “wrote ‘I love you’ before a certain name, then it’s not invalid,” Mr. Salman said. She cast her ballot for a self-styled liberal Islamist in Egypt’s first free and fair presidential vote. In the runoff, she ruined her ballot rather than choose between two conservatives, one from the military and the other from the Muslim Brotherhood.
By midday, a woman had given birth in an Alexandria polling station, state media reported, and she had named her son “Sisi.” But on Monday, she said Egypt may have had too much democracy. She voted for Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former army field marshal whose main achievement is having led the military’s ouster of the nation’s democratically -elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, last summer.
Mr. Sisi, the former army field marshal who led the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last summer, faces only one lesser-known and underfunded opponent, Hamdeen Sabahi. Both represent the same broadly Nasserite political tradition, but Mr. Sisi is considered the candidate of the security forces and government bureaucracy, as well as of the business elite. Several other past or potential presidential candidates declined to enter the race because they said that it would be slanted in favor of Mr. Sisi. “We need a bit of dictatorship,” said Ms. Hazem, a 43-year-old pharmacist, while voting in the middle-class neighborhood of Dokki. “Too much spoiling created a little bit of wildness in the people and it isn’t good,” she added, arguing that young Egyptians should stop “spending all their time protesting and creating all this noise.”
The Brotherhood, the party that dominated Egypt’s free elections in 2011 and 2012, has called for a boycott. Since the takeover last summer, the government installed by Mr. Sisi has killed more than a thousand Brotherhood supporters at street protests and imprisoned tens of thousands of others, including Mr. Morsi and most of the group’s other leaders. Last December, the new government formally declared the organization an illegal terrorist group. “So we picked one from the military this time,” her daughter, Salma Mahmoud, 13, interjected. “To try something new.”
Several liberal or left-leaning organizations such as the April 6 group, which played a leading role in the 2011 uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak, have also called for a boycott. The new government has jailed some of the April 6 group’s leaders, including its coordinator, Ahmed Maher, and a court in Cairo recently banned the group as well. Millions of Egyptians expressed a similar impatience with Egypt’s three and a half year democratic detour on Monday, as they went to the polls in an election universally expected to crown Mr. Sisi as Egypt’s next president.
As polls opened at 9 a.m. on Monday, Egyptian television broadcast footage of a crowd cheering for Mr. Sisi as he entered a polling station to cast his own ballot. It was presumably his first: Egyptian military personnel are barred from voting, and Mr. Sisi, 59, served in the military for more than forty years, until he resigned a few months ago to seek the presidency. His supporters have urged voters to turn out in order to add retrospective legitimacy to Mr. Morsi’s ouster. And in interviews at polling stations around Cairo, many voters said they hoped or expected Mr. Sisi would stay in power long after the eight-year limit set by the Constitution drafted under the new military-backed government.
It is Egypt’s 10th national vote in the last four years, including three constitutional referendums, two rounds each for two legislative chambers, now disbanded, and two rounds to choose a president, who was subsequently deposed. Mr. Sisi will become Egypt’s fourth president in four years, following Mr. Mubarak (under arrest in a military hospital overlooking the Nile), Mr. Morsi (jailed in Alexandria and facing politicized criminal charges), and the current interim president Adly Mansour (a senior judge whom Mr. Sisi appointed to the interim role). “Egypt now needs a harsh leader, a leader disciplined enough to make Egypt walk on dough without messing it up,” said one such voter, Mona el-Saadat, 66, a retired director of public relations for Coca-Cola who was also voting in Dokki.
Mr. Mansour, who will have ruled Egypt for nearly as long as Mr. Morsi’s one year in office, now stands a chance of becoming the first former Egyptian president to remain alive and at large. The only former president whose term did not end in death or jail was President Mohamed Naguib, a caretaker who held the job for two years before Gamal Abdel Nasser consolidated power in 1954. But President Nasser then placed Mr. Naguib under house arrest, barring him from further participation in public life. Mahmoud Abdel Salem, 28, a contractor voting for Mr. Sisi in Imbaba, an impoverished neighborhood, agreed. “He will always be president,” he said, “Much longer than eight years.”
Heavily armed soldiers, some in dark masks, were stationed outside polling places to guard against potential attempts at disruption. Military helicopters buzzed low over the capital and reportedly over other cities as well, a reminder of the military’s power. The Muslim Brotherhood, which dominated the free elections after the popular revolt that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, has called the elections illegitimate and has urged a boycott. So have the group known as April 6 and other liberal or left-leaning organizations that played leading roles in the 2011 uprising.
Mr. Sisi is in effect competing against the roughly 52 percent turnout in the second round of the 2012 presidential election — Egypt’s only free and fair contest — when Mr. Morsi won a suspenseful and intensely competitive race against Ahmed Shafik, another former general. Their runoff followed an even more unpredictable first round of campaigning by a broad spectrum of candidates, with Mr. Morsi receiving about 25 percent of the vote, Mr. Shafik placing second with about 24 percent, and Mr. Sabahi placing third with about 21 percent. Several other potential candidates declined to run, saying the race was slanted overwhelming in favor of Mr. Sisi as the candidate of the security forces and business elite. On Monday, he faced only one opponent, Hamdeen Sabahi, who represents the same broadly Nasserite political tradition as Mr. Sisi but with far less fame, financial backing or cheering from the state and private news media.
Mr. Sisi’s second challenge regards younger voters. Reviewing the results of a constitutional referendum in January that was widely seen as a demonstration of support for Mr. Sisi, news reports and many commentators, including some sympathetic to Mr. Sisi, noted a conspicuous absence of voters under 40. The results spurred a national discussion of disaffection among younger Egyptians who seem to identify more closely with the Arab Spring revolt of 2011. Three out of four Egyptians are under 40, and two out of three are under 35. “With all due respect to Mr. Sabahi, will he be as strong as Mr. Sisi?,” asked Adel el-Masry, 61, a retired government employee who voted for Mr. Sisi in Imbaba. “Does Sabahi have as much support from the government institutions?”
Anecdotal reports on Monday morning suggested a similar pattern, but it was too soon to evaluate. Polls will remain open for two days of voting, and younger voters may turn out later. The turnout was difficult to assess because voting will take place over two days and the temperatures on Monday were unseasonably hot. Many polling stations in the capital were completely or virtually empty by midafternoon, and at least one pro-Sisi political party, the Free Egyptians, acknowledged in a statement that turnout was below expectations.
The third question is potential violence. Since the ouster of Mr. Morsi, Islamist militants have claimed responsibility for a series of bombings aimed at security forces or their headquarters, as well as the assassinations of hundreds of officers and conscripts. The government has said that it is bolstering security to ensure safety at the polls. But among those who did vote in Cairo, the atmosphere was euphoric. Shopkeepers or car owners blasted “Bless the Hands,” a pop song celebrating the military and police forces for their role in ousting Mr. Morsi and their subsequent crackdown on his Islamist supporters. In some places, groups of women gathered under makeshift awnings to dance and sing along.
In an interview on a pro-Sisi talk show on the night before the vote, Abdel Aziz Salman, the general secretary of the High Presidential Election Commission, said it would be permissible for a voter to endorse a candidate by drawing a heart or professing love on a ballot.
“If he wrote ‘I love you’ before a certain name, then it is not invalid,” Mr. Salman advised, without naming a candidate — or needing to. (The election commission later issued a statement clarifying that voters should not take the time to draw hearts if others were waiting to cast ballots.)
Only minor election-related violence was reported, and there were no deaths or injuries. The police dispersed relatively small street protests that broke out in several places.
Mr. Sabahi’s campaign office contended that the judges and police officers manning polling stations had sometimes harassed or excluded its representatives, and in once case had arrested one of its lawyers, Ahmed Hanafi Abu Zaid, while he was trying to observe the voting. In a statement, the Sabahi campaign said that the police had beaten and threatened Mr. Abu Zaid, and then turned him over for prosecution in a military court.
Mr. Sisi, 59, is set to become Egypt’s fourth president in four years, after Mr. Mubarak (under arrest in a military hospital overlooking the Nile), Mr. Morsi (jailed in Alexandria and facing politicized criminal charges), and the current interim president, Adly Mansour, (a senior judge when Mr. Sisi appointed him to an interim role).
Mr. Mansour, who will have ruled Egypt for nearly as long as Mr. Morsi, roughly a year, now stands a chance of becoming the first former Egyptian president to remain alive and free. The only former president whose term did not end in death or jail was President Mohamed Naguib, a caretaker who held the job for two years before Gamal Abdel Nasser consolidated power in 1954. But Mr. Nasser then placed Mr. Naguib under house arrest, barring him from further participation in public life.