On The Elections

So as most of you know, the last 2 days were the presidential elections. Now this is the first time most of us voted in the last 30 years! I'm going to be 22 this July and my whole life (literally) has been in Mubarak's era. After last year's revolution on the 25th of January, we Egyptians were proud that we could topple the regime and for the first time in decades, we felt that we can actually make a difference.

Yes, people lost their lives during that struggle for freedom, people younger than me even but we kept fighting, thinking that none of these lives would go to waste and their blood would not be soaked up into the earth and forgotten. 

Dipping your finger signifies that you have already given your vote.

But alas, most of us couldn't get through this weekend without getting depressed. The unofficial results were published today and people are not happy. People will say: Didn't you want democracy? Isn't this what the people chose? You should respect the people's choice, why are you upset? Just to be clear, I'm not into politics, I don't talk about it and I'm not going to start now but what I'm going to say is merely how I think WITHOUT me having to go in-depth about politics and pretending I know what I'm talking about.

Okay, so the democracy thing, I say yes and no to that and I'll explain why. Yes because this time around, things were done differently, our votes actually counted and we could vote for anyone we want without feeling someone's breathing down our necks. No because considering the percentage of people who are uneducated and those who can't even read or write, you can't really consider their votes as "valid" if you know what I mean. 

Let me tell you a story that happened to me the day I went to vote, just to put things into a better perspective. My mother and I went to the public school late afternoon and surprisingly found no lines, so we went straight in. With us was a less fortunate women of a lower class, who seemed to be in her late 50's or early 60's. Very nicely she asked us while giving us a little piece of crumpled paper: is this a good man? As my mom and I looked at the paper we found written Hamadeen Sabbahy. We smiled and told her yes he is, we're voting for him too. She smiled and said that her son was the one who wrote that piece of paper for her and warned not to vote for the man who had posters plastered all over the bus stop as he'll mess up the country (our guess was it was either Mohamed Morsi or Ahmed Shafik). As it was her turn, the woman obviously could not read and so required the assistance of someone to tell her which name matches the one she has. She voted as did we and we all left with hope in our hearts and the feeling of a brighter tomorrow.

The point of this story is to show that this is the majority of Egyptians, sad but true. Not necessarily illiterate but what I meant by uneducated was, they don't even have the minimum amount of information on any of the candidates and so they end up voting for someone because either everyone else is or because they were told to. "Going with the flow" isn't the mentality to have when it comes to a serious matter like selecting our next president. 

In my opinion, this war our main problem.

We have been living in the dark too long, too long for us to do it to ourselves again! I'm not going to get into a debate about who should and shouldn't have won (that's a whole other story) but you start questioning things when at the last minute, one of the people who was basically shot-down during the revolution, kicked out of the office and the only candidate to have shoes thrown at (yes it happened) gets into second place  and actually has a shot at winning this election! I really can't fathom the people who convincingly and sanely voted for this man, what are they thinking and what do they think he could possibly do for this country? I do realize however, that some people voted for one person in fear of the other and not because they were convinced that this is the right person they should vote for.

I keep thinking did this revolution fail? Did all these kids, young and old men die for nothing? Did people lose their eyesight in vain? Did women get harassed and raped just for them to go through it all over again?! 

To be honest, I don't know what will happen if either Morsi or Shafik won. I'm trying not be pessimistic but one thing is obvious: we don't need a new president, we need new people as well.