Monday, June 21st, 2012. Big day!
Today, I’m on a bus from Sharm el Sheikh going back to Alexandria. 9 hours bus ride – if there isn’t any hassle on the way, which might happen a lot this week.
Which is why I chose today specifically to go back to Alexandria; so if anything comes up, I still have enough time to make it Alexandria before the 23rd.
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2012. Bigger day!
It will be one of the biggest days in all Egyptian history. As I read somewhere – can’t specifically remember where I read this – Egyptians are choosing their ruler for the first time since 7000 years!
I won’t babble a lot about history, but it is true, since the time of Pharaohs and Egypt was a corrupted dictatorship system.
But also, as once said by the former ruler of Libya, Gaddafi, Egypt is one of the few places that has been robbed for 7000 years, and continue to be robbed to this day, and its people are still alive and are able to get dinner on the table before they go to bed. Well most of them…
Back to the Elections!
Exciting day! Since the revolution, this is the third time I go voting! Something I had never done before, or never even bothered to know its dates! And before you point fingers, I would say only 10-15% of all Egyptians used to vote in the pre-revolutionary era, and those who did or didn’t always knew the results before they came out anyway.
And while the last two times I voted, it was never for the winning side, I am having higher hopes this time, since after the parliament many people now know better, and have given enough chances to some people and those people did nothing, and they lost a huge part of their supporters.
But what is bugging me about these elections is that I have to take this 9 hours bus to go vote!
I don’t know why they made this rule where every citizen must go vote in a certain specific place (which is close to the address they have on their ID.) I am one of millions of Egyptians who are now working in a place that is far away from home, and no I will not change the address on my national ID, it takes a lot of paper work, and it’s just not worth the hassle (if I do that, I’ll have to change my driving license, followed by my passport and my pharmacist work permit, and then I’ll be lost forever between two cities, going back and forth between them several times to get any paper work done. I’ve seen my father do it and NO, I will not do that!)
I am however one of those lucky people that are able to take a 4 days off (despite the fact that I just had a 2 weeks’ vacation traveling around Egypt) to go back to my home city and vote.
Others, like the ones working with us in the pharmacy, simply can’t. Even if we gave them a 3 days’ vacation to go vote, they won’t go, to them it is not worth paying for the bus tickets back and forth! Too bad, because most of them are voting the guy I am voting for, that is some lost votes here!
As an Egyptian, or more specifically, as a Christian Egyptian, these elections are scary, they might be the end of life as we, Egyptians, know it, and that holds two scenarios, or maybe three.
I will not get into the details of these scenarios, but to give titles it would be either Mubarak’s Era all over again, total change to a very bright future, or a third scenario which hold two sub scenarios, either go in the direction of Iran, or the direction of Turkey (which is not so bad, if it went into that same exact direction.)
My words about those scenarios are brief, I will not say names or point fingers, though it is very obvious if you do know some of the names that are running for presidency…I just don’t want to be more obvious, since A) This is not a political blog and B) Political bloggers that are so direct and obvious usually get arrested and put in jail…
I have nothing more to say for now. This post probably doesn’t mean a lot to most of you, and it has no direct relation with travel. Well, you can indirectly relate it to YOUR plans of visiting Egypt in the future, but more on that can be discussed later…
I wonder how it feels like to vote for a winning party for a change 
Readers, those of you that live in the “developed democratic” world, how does it feel? And how do you usually feel when you’re going to put your vote?
Does everyone get this sense of pride when they fold that paper and put it in the box? Or is it just me because it’s something new?
And more importantly, do you have to go back to your home cities to vote? Or is this done online in your countries? We are undeveloped, and a huge proportion of the population can’t even read or write, to use computers to vote… Yes it IS THAT bad.
Wish Egypt Luck and a Better Future. For your own sake of traveling here if not for ours 
Good luck to Egypt and the elections, hopefully the result will be a good one for you and the rest of the country!
I’ve only voted once so far, as it’s only been two elections since I was old enough to vote, and I was in the middle of moving to another country during the second one, so it was sorta exciting when I did vote, don’t know if that will continue. The party I voted for did “win”, although we still have a coalition government. I live in Norway though, so compared to most other countries, all our major parties are not really that different, so it wouldn’t have been too bad if the other “side” won…although they are kinda stupid.
We’re generally supposed to vote in our home districts, as far as I know, but it’s possible to vote from a distance, such as if you live in a different country, but then you have to sort it out before, which I don’t know exactly how you do. It’s also possible for us to vote in advance the week or so before the actual election date, in case you happen to be away from home on election day or some other reason. I think they’re testing out voting online in some small regions in Norway, but how that went/will go I don’t know.
Well after the revolution they allowed Egyptians living abroad to vote in the embassies which I’d say is much much easier than voting inside Egypt due to the little numbers…in the parliament elections I stood a 3.5 hours line to vote
and I’m expecting tomorrow is going to be the same.
I know in Norway the parties are not THAT different, so yeah no big deal
Keep wishing us luck please and thanks for your comment
I wonder how it feels like to vote for a winning party too!
I hope the next era will be different and will be better..
OH and get home safe
Moyra, if you’re not voting for the person I’m voting for then you might win
I know I’m voting for a lost case, but he’s the best of the worst as I see him 
And btw I’m home safe…10 hours and a half…loong way
Good luck ya Mina:)
I so wish I was in Egypt right now, to witness this historical moment!
You ask how does it feel like to be in a “developed country” and going to vote… well this is one of the things that make me love Egypt: in my country (Italy), in Europe, in the US… I see no hope. I mean of course in my big picture there is hope and a happy ending but what I mean is that we are so deeply lost into our political and economical system that keeps being the same, nothing changes, the politicians are always the same or their friends/relatives and when someone new comes he has to follow the rules of the predecessors…
In these countries we *think* we are developed but we’re not. There’s no way out. Look at Italy: how many times I heard the same story “Egypt is dangerous”, and then we have mafia, we had a bombing in a school (!!!) the other day, we had various bombings to tax offices lately, we had a person being shot in my city…
We have racism, we have violence, we have rapes, we have corruption, we have economical crisis… So what’s the difference?
The difference is that in Egypt at least there is hope. Things will change in a way or another. Either way it’s a long way to go but isn’t this exciting? Much more than knowing that there’s nothing you can do, like here.
Fingers crossed for the country of my heart <3
See you soon in Egypt!
I’ll go in a moment to stand in the historical line
and by historical line I mean it is TOO long 
I really hope you are right about the hope that is for Egypt. Some people are still pessimistic and still say the elections won’t be fair, and that the candidate that the SCAF chooses will win no matter what…I really hope that is not the case…
And you’re asking about the difference? The one and only simple reason is that you are an EU country and we’re an Arab world country :d That is why fire works in our country can sound dangerous, while random incidents in Europe are just random incidents that won’t affectthe safety of the country.
I know you don’t think like this, but many people do think in that way…So I really am hoping that there is still hope and that we’ll change for the best
See you soon!!