My finger is pink and my head held high – 1st real election in lifetime for many

(From Twitter: @SaraFarag "My finger is pink and my head held high") 

Since 8:38 am this morning my inbox good flooded with emails by members of the mailinglist „constitutionaldebate“: the first one was by Tarek saying that people should get moving as polling stations were already filling up quickly. His mail was soon answered by more than 45 people, who recorded they had been voting and who informed about the length of the queues at different polling stations, and who as well simply wanted to share their pride. And that's the word of the day: PRIDE

If you skim through twitter or news sites, if you look at and speak to the people at the polling stations, it's pride that you see and hear – and feel. This post might be much more „feely“ than previous ones, but I can't help it: I am so moved! I am so moved by what I've seen today! I went out right after I read through the first mails and did the usual media checkup on Lybia. (Japan has fallen off my personal media-cliff, I know the situation there is horrible, and definitely worth following, yet I justify my ignorance to myself by telling me that there is surely other people taking care of it. Focusing on the MENA region, even on Egypt alone, these days means taking in an incredible, overwhelming amount of input on a daily basis anyways.)

Thanks to a government website that was listing all the polling stations, neatly indicated on a google map it was easy for me to find the polling station which is closest to my house. Only about five minutes away, it is – as all of the polling stations – located at a school. Even if it wasn't saturday schools would have been empty as the military council had announced a national holiday for today, in order to allow people to go and vote. I placed inself in front of the school gate in the shade of a bridge to shelter myself from the sun which even in the morning, it was only around 10 am them, is quite strong now as summer is drawing closer.

While I was watching a lot of people passed buy, and entered the gate to disappear in the school building. A camera team of a Saudi Channel was positioned in the courtyard, as were two men speaking to people and taking notes. Other Egyptians were sitting on benches or just standing around, chatting, while more people kept coming in. Those who were leaving the building were easily recognizable as those having cast their vote already by their one pink finger. In order to prevent people from voting twice, people stick their finger into pink ink. In those polling stations I visited they didnt care which finger one used as the marking finger – maybe they didn't care as they knew how futile the whole ink-endeavour was, anyways? But this only became clear to me later...

For the time being I was watching from outside the gate, taking note that the majority of newcomers where women, people were of all ages and from all walks of life. I saw families who came to vote together, groups of youths, friends showing up together, many couples – young and old. At this polling station women were wearing a veil covering their hair (hijab) or unveiled, hardly anyone was wearing a niqab (full veil) at this location. I observed people in neat Western-style clothes such as poloshirts and jeans as well as men in the traditional gallabeyyas. One of them – whom I'd later see again in an akhwa in my neighbourhood – was even wearing the traditional headcover for men, arriving on his run-down carrier-bike usually used to transport bread or other food, while many others were instantly pulling their blackberries once they had voted to share the news with friends and family.

The gate was secured by a police officer and a military police guy with an automatic rifle...yet the soldier looked rather kind, and when I addressed the police officer both of them were readily answering a couple of questions to me. When another police officer waved at me so I could come over and speak to him, I was – as usual - preparing for some uncomfortable enquiry of the kind I've seen and experienced often enough in the past. (Nothing bad, just suspicion, a look, some gestures, questions and eventually orders that make clear to you that no one - especially not a foreigner - is supposed to observe anything that's going on - especially not if the location has police there and might in the slightest sense be related to anything political.) Yet, he just asked me what I was doing there, why I wasn't coming in. And to my surprise, even when he understood I wasnt allowed to vote, he nonetheless asked me to enter and said of course that wouldnt be a problem at all. WTF?!

You cannot imagine my surprise ( I guess you maybe can if you've been in a police state before...). I was prepared for getting chased away again by another, higher officer, but nothing happened. Instead the cameraman instantly addressed me to chat with me, just as some more senior man who had been standing in the courtyard talking to the film team. Besides his lifestory and those of his sons he also let me know (only when I was pushing really hard for some more actual information) that he had not made up his mind yet whether to vote YES or NO. So he was hanging out there to hear people's arguments pro and con – and to tell his lifestory to anyone who wouldn't run fast enough....

Two of his neighbours than engaged him in a discussion, in the wake of which they told him that they were voting YES because they wanted to get the military out of politics as soon as possible. But also because everyone who said NO was for the abolishment of article two in the new constitution. Article 2 states that Egypt is an Islamic country. While it is true that those who want a secular constitution would rather vote for NO, there is no reason to assume that the causal relation exists also in the opposite direction. Yet – as far as Egyptian media and Twitter report, many Imams have used the Friday prayers to put forward exactly this screwed argumentation. Not without further enforcing their point of view by stating it was a religious duty to vote YES....

The Moslem Brother meanwhile have come under considerable fire from the media and activists – and also by many religious Egyptians and MB members themselves! - because they allegedly declared approval of the amendments a religious duty.The MB keep pushing for a YES, but saw the need to distance themselves from the aforementioned instrumentalisation of religion which in particular alienates believers. 

Yet, during the day, there has been reports of religious propaganda being spread at polling stations. Also, in the run up to the referendum NDP's traditional means of bribing people to vote YES have been observed. Several other issues might have hampered the fairness of the process and the representativity of the results. I will write more about that later ….