2010 Elections in Egypt



Egyptian Military lining the highway, overlooking a neighborhood prone to protests concerning the election



Election Campaign Poster

Election Campaign Posters line the streets

This afternoon I stumbled across some interesting information about the parliamentary elections currently going on in Egypt that I would like to share. While we were in Egypt, we were in numerous situations in which we noted armed militia lining the freeway for what we was told as riot/crowd-control in case another uprising occured. On Friday, we also crossed through a square (although, when we saw the crowd we quickly walked along the outskirts of the square) that was full of men who looked like they were in the midst of organizing a large crowd, and then we had to get through several security checkpoints to walk down a street that seemed like it would usually be traversable. While in Luxor, our guide also told us that this was the first election in which women were allowed to run for office. Our Giza guide mentioned that there were fourteen different political parties and sometimes groups cared very intensely if they didn't win the seats they wanted. ...All of these experiences, knowledge nuggets, etc, are all coming together as I saw this article today and did a little digging:

1. Here's an interesting video clip from CNN, evidently many are realizing the elections are quite unfair:

2.  This is one of the headlining topics on Human Rights Watch, another organization that believes the Egyptian elections are unjust. 
3.  Women aren't just allowed to run for office (evidently they had been before), what is significant, according to this article is that over the next five years, through elections, women are supposed to hold a minimum of 12% of Parliament.  The article also notes that this is not going well. 
4.  There have in fact been riots, as are detailed by this article. 
5.  There are groups that were discriminated prior to the election, as explained in this article.
6.  People have been paid to vote, people have voted multiple, multiple times, people have been blocked from entering election stations, and election posts have closed prohibitively early...Check out the videos on this blog...

Very interesting things to think about... this certainly explains why many of the guides were very vague and cryptic when answering questions about the elections.