The sadness of Egypt's presidential election
Above, a picture of a voter by Nehal ElSherif, on Flickr — via Elijah Zarwan who comments "He looks like you just caught him selling out his conscience."
Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros writes:
As I was crashing to make the deadline for my elections piece on the first day of voting, I trawled through the raw pictures the cameraman had collected from various polling stations looking for that classic woman-holding-up-purple-finger-and-smiling shot.
I didn't find it. There were lots of purple fingers (the ink stain you get showing you've voted) but nobody held theirs up to the cameraman with pride, the hallmark shot of previous election days.
There is a distinct lack of energy or enthusiasm surrounding this vote. It's safe to predict that most of those eligible to vote will not cast their ballots this time around - a mixture of apathy, confusion and active boycott.
There are of course those who tell me they are voting Mohamed Morsi or Ahmed Shafik out of conviction but ask a few more questions and you'll find the conviction is more about the other not winning than belief in the candidate they are voting for.
For many others, the deep seated depression surrounding the vote comes from the realization that whoever wins, it's the military rulers or SCAF that will end up running the country.
February 12th was not the start of a transition to democracy, it was a military takeover.
Yes, it was a military takeover. One many hoped would end the chaos mostly promoted by the security services in their panic, and that could provide a safe transition back to civilian rule. The mistake was to trust them. In this election, SCAF gets to define the powers of the president depending on which candidate wins.
On another note, I am rather tired (and know many others who also are) of the purple-finger chasing craze that started with the Iraqi election. There's no need to go to polling stations. The fraud, if there is any, will be way too subtle to be detected by wandering through. The fraud in this election is not necessarily in the electoral process, it's in the electoral context and the meta-politics of this "transition."