Polls open in Egypt's landmark elections

Polling stations opened on Monday Polling stations opened on Monday, state television reported, in Egypt’s first parliamentary election since a popular uprising ended the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak in February.
Egyptians in Cairo, Alexandria and other areas included in the first phase of the staggered lower house election were allowed to vote from 8 a.m. (0600 GMT). Polls close at 7 p.m. (1700 GMT) but voters in this round can also vote on Tuesday.
Voting will take place in three stages beginning on Monday in the main cities of Cairo, Alexandria and other areas in a drawn-out procedure that will finish in March and that has been criticized for its complexity.
The backdrop is ominous after a week of new protests calling for the resignation of the interim military rulers who stepped in after Mubarak’s fall. Forty-two have been killed in the latest flare-up and more than 3,000 injured, according to AFP.
The decision by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to appoint Kamal al-Ganzouri, a 78-year-old former Mubarak-era politician, as caretaker prime minister last week has fanned the flames of popular anger.
In an interview with Al Arabiya, Assistant Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Mukhtar al-Mulla said that the government of Ganzouri will steer the helm until the election of a new president in June. “At then, the new president would decide whetherto keep the government or change it.”
And in the early hours of Monday, saboteurs blew up a pipeline supplying gas to Israel, another reminder of the threat to the country’s stability.
Masked gunmen planted explosives under the pipeline west of the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, witnesses told the official MENA news agency. It was the ninth such attack since this year.
Security sources said the explosions were detonated from a distance and that tracks from two vehicles were found in the area. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The pipeline, which supplies gas to Jordan and Israel, was last attacked on Nov. 25. It is the eighth such attack since Mubarak stepped down on Feb. 11. It is the ninth this year, with the first attack a few days before Mubarak was toppled.
On Sunday however, 18-year-old student Raghda was looking forward.
“It’s our first chance to vote and the vote will have a value,” Raghda told AFP in Tahrir Square, the cradle of Egypt’s revolution where hundreds of thousands forced Mubarak’s downfall.
The election itself looked in danger last week as unrest gripped the country, but military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi has stuck to the schedule and called for a large turnout.
Much remains unclear about how the new parliament will function and whether it will be able to resolve a standoff with the armed forces over how much power they will retain under a new constitution to be written next year.
Shadi Hamid, research director at the Doha Brookings Center, told Reuters the parliamentary vote phased over weeks until Jan. 10 was the first real benchmark of progress in Egypt’s transition.
“It will also tell us how much Egyptians are invested in this political process. If turnout is low, it will mean there is widespread disaffection among Egyptians and they don't believe that real change is possible through the electoral process.”
In the absence of polling data and a precedent for the vote, the results are difficult to call, but a party set up by the formerly banned Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is expected to emerge as the largest single grouping.
Oppressed under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties stood aloof from those challenging army rule, unwilling to let anything obstruct elections that may open a route to political power previously beyond their reach. It is not clear whether voters will punish them for that or whether the Brotherhood’s disciplined organization will enable its newly formed Freedom and Justice Party to triumph over the welter of lesser-known parties and individuals in the race, according to Reuters.
Hardline Islamists, secular parties and groups representing the interests of the former Mubarak regime are all expected to win seats, raising the prospect of a highly fragmented and ideologically split new parliament.
The stakes could not be higher for Egypt, the cultural leader of the Arab world, but the conduct and results of the election will also have repercussions for the entire Middle East at a time of wrenching change.
“For most Arabs, the primary examples of democratic processes in the Arab world are in Iraq and Lebanon,” said Bruce Rutherford, a Middle East specialist and author on Egypt at the U.S.-based Colgate University.
“In both cases, elections produced weak, fragmented, and largely ineffectual governments.”
“If Egypt produces the same result, then the appeal of democracy in the region may be weakened. However, if the Egyptian experience is positive... the effect could be very powerful.”
Egypt, with a fast-growing population of more than 85 million, is a former British protectorate ruled by military leaders for most of its history since independence in 1952.
The fresh protests last week stemmed from fears that Tantawi and his fellow generals, initially welcomed as a source of stability in the days after Mubarak's fall, were looking to consolidate their power.
They have pushed back the original timetable for handing over power to a civilian government and have demanded a final say on all legislation concerning the army in the future.
Critics say they have also been too quick to resort to the repressive techniques of the Mubarak regime, jailing dissidents and unleashing deadly violence on protesters, in a bid to maintain stability.
Meanwhile, the leading new civilian powers -- the pro-democracy movement in Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood and future presidential hopefuls Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Mussa -- have been caught in the uncertainty.
The Tahrir movement is deeply divided over whether to take part in the elections and lend legitimacy to the military rulers, while the Muslim Brotherhood has supported elections from which it expects to capitalize.
The ruling military council “must task the party which gains the biggest number of seats to form the next government,” Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan told AFP on Sunday in a sign of their confidence.
After two days of voting in the first stage of the elections for the lower parliament, other cities and regions will follow on Dec.14 and Jan. 3.
After these, another round of voting will take place from Jan. 29 for the upper house of parliament and presidential elections are to be held by no later than the end of June next year.
Mubarak, who is on trial for murder and corruption in Cairo along with his two sons, is expected to follow events on Monday from a military hospital in the capital where he is reportedly being treated for cancer.
Parliament’s lower house will be Egypt’s first nationally elected body since Mubarak’s fall, and those credentials alone may enable it to dilute the military's monopoly of power.
Yet army council member General Mamdouh Shahin said the new assembly would have no right to remove a government appointed by the council using its “presidential” powers -- a stance the new parliament may try to challenge, according to Reuters.
The military had envisaged that once upper house polls are completed in March, parliament would pick a constituent assembly to write a constitution to be approved by a referendum before a presidential election. That would have let the generals stay in power until late 2012 or early 2013.
The faster timetable agreed under pressure from the street has thrown up many questions about how the process will unfold and how much influence the army will retain behind the scenes.
The United States and its European allies, which have long valued Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, have urged the generals to step aside swiftly, apparently seeing them as causing, not curing instability in the most populous Arab nation.