Monday, November 14, 2011

It will be a very disappointing month...

... for some people.

Hi,

Regular followers of my adventures in Egypt have suffered considerably lately as I haven't blogged for quite a while.

I have my reasons, but that's for another post some time soon, I think.

November, as it seems, will be election month. I believe it's for the parliament here in Egypt. More importantly it is for many the first time ever that the outcome is really not predictable. Obviously
because the current government is just a peacekeepr for the army generals that have been ruling for the last decades. So unless somebody has rigged the elections, there's no telling what
the outcome will be.
What I think that will happen is that the turn-up will be high. Mainly because of the fact that everybody has for the first time since a very long time the idea that now it matters. "These elections your vote will actually count" is what some of my Egyptian friends have said to me. Before they wouldn't vote because that only made sense when you were pro Mubarak.

Both with this I think it important to mention that although your vote counts, a single vote in an 80,000,000 population is, by itself, not very significant. (Still you should always exercise your democratic rights.) But what I'm trying to say is that one as an individual might vote on party X, but that doesn't automatically mean that party X will win the elections or even gets a seat in the parliament.
So my feeling is that many of the 80mln here in Egypt will be facing that democracy has no real impact on their lifes because the majority of the population doesn't share the same feelings and beliefs.
In fact, the majority of the population had completely different motivations for a revolution than those that started it all. Money vs Democracy.

"The revolution might result possibly in democracy, but also, at the same time, to less freedom" is another concern one friend of mine expressed. He referred to the fact that a new democratically elected government might very well be very conservative and very much against a secular system. The revolutionairies will be very disappointed, seeing all their good effort go to waste.

In a democracy, the elected government may very well not be the one you would like to see. But more importantly, in a democracy, the elected government must be the government for all and therefore it should respect all equally and provide equal opportunity to all. Which means compromises are required, otherwise the democratically elected government will be killing the democracy once ruling.
There is no room for extremist beliefs in a democracy. So it is imperative that the new government will not keep all of its promises. And the naïve voters, which there will be many, will be disappointed
as it will seem to them that the new politicians are just as crooked as the old regime was.

A main concern here in Egypt with many is what will happen after the elections. Sofar there seems to be no tension at all. We're about 2 weeks away from election day, and it's quiet in the streets, relatively quiet that is. But the worry is about what will happen after the election. Will the army allow a new government? Will they respect the democracy even when it means they'll loose a lot of their current power? Will the people accept the outcome of the elections?

Am I worried about all this? Not really to be honest. The Egyptian people are a very mellow and very peaceful people. Yes there've been incidents since the revolution, but these have been incidents with
relatively small groups.
I am preparing though. Have sufficient water and soda (Coke, Mountain Dew and 7UP Diet) in my fridge. Bread and some frozen food that my driver made for me in the freezer, a new jar of jam and plenty of unplayed Xbox games and unread books on my Kindle. But I would've had this in any case.

I just hope that it will be the media that will be disappointed, because there will be no riots in the streets, no killings, no uproar... No 'news' for them to report.



Iwan

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