Egyptians trickled into mostly empty polling centers as they voted on Sunday in the second stage of parliamentary elections that is to produce the country’s first legislature since a chamber dominated by Muslims was dissolved by a court ruling in 2012.
Tens of thousands of troops and police officers were deployed to safeguard the two-day vote, reflecting growing security concerns less than a month after a Russian airliner crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. Russia has said the crash was caused by an onboard bomb and a local Islamic State affiliate claimed the Oct. 31 attack.
The attack led Russia to suspend flights to and from Egypt, and Britain to cancel routes to the popular Sharm el-Sheikh resort, where the flight originated, dealing a major blow to Egypt’s tourism industry, which was already hurting from years of unrest.
Photo: AFP
The new, 596-seat legislature is due to hold its inaugural session next month after a runoff is held the same month. Egyptians voted last month in 14 provinces, the vote’s first phase, with a turnout of about 27 percent. The latest phase is being held in the other 14 provinces and the capital, Cairo.
That was the lowest turnout in any vote, except one for a toothless upper chamber in 2012, since the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak in a 2011 popular uprising.
Turnout in the second phase is not likely to be much higher given the widespread apathy over the political process under President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. The career army officer led the military’s ouster of Egypt’s first freely elected leader, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013, amid a wave of mass demonstrations against his rule. Al-Sisi was elected last year.
The trickle of voters in nine polling stations visited by reporters in Cairo on Sunday was in sharp contrast to the long lines seen in the first elections held after Mubarak’s ouster.
During this election’s first phase last month, the government sought to boost turnout by giving employees a half-day off to cast their ballots on the second day of voting. Still, it is unlikely that the overall turnout in the election would exceed 30 percent. There has been no official word on granting workers time off yesterday.
“If we were asking people to donate money, we would see longer lines than this,” quipped 22-year-old shopkeeper Yassin Hany, as he came out of a polling center in Cairo’s Ain Shams district. “The government only pays attention to us when they want us to vote. We are only visible then.”
“I only voted because maybe one of the people running might not be completely bad,” he added.
Since Morsi’s ouster, authorities have cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood, his now-banned group, jailing thousands and killing hundreds in street clashes with security forces. The young liberal and pro-democracy activists who spearheaded the 2011 uprising have also been swept up in the crackdown, with authorities detaining dozens of them, mostly for breaching a law adopted in 2013 that effectively bans street demonstrations.
The Brotherhood, which swept every vote held after Mubarak’s ouster until Morsi was overthrown, are boycotting the election, along with most secular, liberal and left-wing activists.
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