The indelible pink ink used to mark those who had voted.
Even the President got his finger marked :)
The disadvantage of this indelible pink ink is that on the night of election you could easily tell who voted and who did not!!! At 23:00 I went to a coffee shop to meet with friends, in the whole place out of maybe 40 eligible voters there were only 6 or 7 guys who voted!!!! It is a disgrace.
Overall the elections went fine, yes many are saying that there were violations, lets agree and assume the elections were fair without a single violation, would we be celebrating the rise of a new Egyptian president? Who are we kidding, definitely not Mubarak was a sure winner probably not in such a landslide, but he would have won the elections anyway.
I have to be honest and admit something though; I am ashamed to say that I did not vote. I really wanted to but the problem was that I did not have a voting card (yes I know, this is the lame excuse that everyone is using), but I do not have a national number card “Rakam Kaoumy”. It was only at 22:30 that a friend told me I could have voted with my regular ID card in the Dokki polling station as a with my old ID but this was said at 22:30 and the voting was over by 22:00, it was too late!!!! I promise that I will go issue a voting card in November so I can vote in the parliament election.
Anyway Mubarak won by 88.5% my vote wouldn't have changed a thing after all, for 2 reasons. I did not know who to vote for? I was going to vote as a joke for Mr. Sabahy this 91 year old candidate who wanted all Egyptian men to wear the Fez and a national costume, he also said if he won, he would give up his post to Mubarak, he also said that he himself will vote for Mubarak??!!! He is totally fucked up :) Why the hell is he running if he is willing to give his presidential seat to Mubarak????? Don't ask me, I have no idea!!! So voting for Sabahy was an indirect way to vote for Mubarak.
This election itself is not important the important elections would be the coming parliamentary elections, as well as the coming presidential elections in 6 years time. Mubarak is now 77 years old I do not think he will run again 6 years from now?!!!! Hopefully the different parties will manage to prepare strong candidates for the 2011 election. I think the 2011 election will be the real presidential election in Egypt. I will make sure to vote then :)
The participation in the voting was very weak only 23% of the eligible voters voted. In my opinion it shows in a way how people are not used to elections and how the majority of the population is so passive that they don’t really give a shit who is ruling the country, or they have totally lost faith, I don't know how to read this figure?
The cool thing though is that allot of people are now determined to get voting cards and to be active voters, and this itself is a huge change.
