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May 23rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
It also belatedly granted papers to allow some international election
monitors, including the US-based Carter Centre, access to polling stations.
Assuming no candidate wins an outright 50 per cent majority after the vote on
Wednesday and Thursday, the leading two will, in the style of the French
presidential elections, go through to a second round next month.
The novelty of the vote and lack of trust in the opinion polls mean few are
daring to predict the outcome.
Long queues formed from early in the morning at the country’s 13,000 polling
booths, which will stay open until 8pm. “I can die in a matter of months, so
I came for my children, so they can live,” Medhat Ibrahim, who suffers from
cancer, said as he waited in a poor district south of Cairo. “We want to
live better, like human beings.”
The front-runner, ever since Mr Mubarak’s fall after 18 days of dramatic
protests in Tahrir Square, has been Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister
and secretary-general of the Arab League.
But as a member of the wealthy ruling elite, and the oldest candidate at 75,
he comes over as out-of-touch to many working class and younger voters,
empowered for the first time.
Although they are trailing in such polls as there have been, few rule out the
possibility of at least one, and possibly two Islamists making through this
round. The polls greatly underestimated their likely support in
parliamentary elections in December and January, in which the Muslim
Brotherhood and the even more conservative Salafi movement won almost
three-quarters of the seats.
If the Brotherhood were able to repeat that success, the winner would be
Mohammed Morsi, an American-educated professor of engineering, with
conservative views on social issues but a staunchly free market economic
agenda.
He has been strongly challeged by Abdulmoneim Aboul Fotouh, a former
Brotherhood leader who left the movement after his attempts to reform it
failed, and who has publicly committed himself to respect personal freedoms
and a multi-party democracy.
The fifth candidate, Hamdeen Sabahi, has had a late surge in popularity. His
socialist and nationalist beliefs hark back to the 1950s and 60s, but still
have an appeal, especially for the urban liberals who fought to bring down
the military regime but regard Islamic rule as almost as bad.
Even many of the people who took no part in the revolution – a “silent
majority” known popularly as the Hizb al-Kanaba, or Sofa Party – are
positive about the outcome of the election. An opinion poll said 52 per cent
of people were “optimistic about the future”, compared to just 18 per cent
who were pessimistic.
Ahmed Saber, 44, a doctor, said the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Renaissance Project”
could turn Egypt into an advanced country in 20 years. “Look what the
Islamist party has done in Turkey,” he said – a common comparison, though
the Brotherhood itself rejects it. “We want to do the same.”
But some are sceptical that after so many years in power the military and
their now dissolved front party, the National Democratic Party, are prepared
really to hand over power.
“We aren’t used to fair elections,” said Mohammed Ali, 46, an IT engineer
walking across Tahrir Square. “The NDP consider this their last battle, and
they will use all the means they have planned and practised to fix the
election.”
He claimed, as have others, that old regime officials have been buying
identity cards and voting papers.
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