The upcoming presidential elections will put Egypt on a new path, writes Omayma Abdel-Latif As the country prepares to go to the polls in the first multi-candidate presidential elections due to take place next Wednesday, the most persistent question, ironically, is not about the winner among the 10 presidential candidates, since this is viewed by many as a foregone conclusion, but rather how many Egyptians decide to cast their vote. For a large number of analysts, including pro-government ones, voter turnout will prove essential to the success -- or failure for that matter -- of an election that the propaganda machine of the National Democratic Party (NDP) presented to the public as the first step on the road to democratic change. Whether or not the catchy slogans, carefully staged events and colourful posters designed by the campaign strategists of NDP incumbent President Hosni Mubarak will lure Egypt's silent majority to abandon its long-standing apathy, the result of years of political coercion, remains anyone's guess. Popular participation in the poll is a common concern for most of the candidates. Egyptian voters, who have been bombarded by campaign pledges for two weeks, were urged to participate. "Egyptians should get out and vote," Wafd Party candidate Noaman Gomaa told a rally on Tuesday. The NDP and top government officials echoed the same message. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, in what was an attempt to encourage voters to show up at polling stations, pledged that his government was "after peaceful elections". He pointed out in press statements on Monday that directives have been put out to police forces to "exercise maximum self-restraint". "Police were told to let people vote freely," Nazif told reporters in what was viewed as a break with a long-established tradition of government interference, security violations and violence that marked most of Egypt's recent electoral experiences. Government critics argue that Nazif's statements are only designed to diffuse the increasing international pressure on Egypt to ensure fair and free elections. The government, critics point out, has not done enough to ensure that old tactics of vote rigging will not be repeated this time. The Presidential Elections Committee's decision denying civil society monitors the right to be inside polling stations has only deepened suspicions. In a statement issued Tuesday, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) condemned the committee's ban, alleging it had no legal justification. But NDP sources downplayed public and opposition concerns of vote rigging, insisting that the stakes are higher for the government this time to ensure that a corruption-free and violence-free elections process takes place. "I think the party has learnt its lesson from past experiences," Lubna Abdel-Latif, a Cairo University economics professor and key strategist of Mubarak's electoral campaign told Al-Ahram Weekly on Tuesday. "The NDP leadership wants to ensure these elections will be free and fair because we know that people have high expectations of what the president will do this time," Abdel-Latif added. Abdel-Latif further pointed out that part of the campaign effort was directed to mobilising people across the country to get out and vote. "It will not matter who they vote for," she said, "the most important thing is that they go to the polls in big numbers." Current figures put registered voters at 32 million with a usual voter turnout of 10 to 15 per cent. In the latest Egyptian voting experience -- the 25 May referendum on constitutional amendments -- the Interior Ministry placed voter turnout at 53 per cent while a report of monitoring judges placed it at only two to three per cent. For some political analysts, the focus on voter turnout has only one meaning. "They -- the NDP -- want to manage it in a way that shows there is an overwhelming public consensus over Mubarak that would justify a fifth term in office," explained Fahmi Howeidy, a prominent political commentator. Thus, Howeidy went on, it would legitimise a process that has been the target of severe criticism from across the political spectrum, showing it to be a result of popular will. Some pro-reform groups nonetheless insist that they will not allow the "popular will" to be rigged. Although Kifaya and other reform movements remain undecided about the kinds of activities they will undertake on 7 September, one thing they insist on is to remain vigilant. "The whole world will be watching what happens in Egypt on that day," Abdel-Halim Qandeel, Kifaya spokesperson told the Weekly. "Egyptians will also be extremely vigilant and will expose any violations. It will be their tactics and tools of oppression versus our tactics of exposing them to Egyptians and the rest of the world," Qandeel added. Hundreds of observers belonging to three main organisations -- the National Campaign for Monitoring Elections, the Independent Monitoring Committee and the grassroots group Shayfeencom -- are expected to be positioned outside polling stations to watch closely the conduct of the police and monitor reported estimates of voter turnout. One very important monitoring body, however, will be the judges who are yet to decide on whether or not they will oversee the elections. The Judges' Club is due to convene tomorrow, in what many described as an historic session, to decide on the issue. Sources at the Club reveal that a consensus is emerging that the judges should not boycott supervision. They would be likely, also, to issue a report documenting all violations witnessed, as they did on the 25 May referendum. While much thought and ink has been devoted to elections day, the elections' aftermath has been the target of increasing speculation during the week. What will become of Egypt on 8 September was a question that promoted analysts on all sides of the debate to make exaggerated predictions. Mubarak's opponents argue that "the show of democracy", or what Egypt's prominent poet Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudi aptly described as "the three minute freedom", will come to an end. One editor of an independent weekly newspaper anticipated that his paper, known for its anti-Mubarak stance, would be shut down when Mubarak is elected. A regime change of sorts, says another, will take place starting 8 September. Pro-government writers drew scenarios of anarchy and chaos in the event that Mubarak failed to secure the top post. "What if Mubarak lost?" asked Sayed Ali, an Al-Ahram columnist, who went on to draw a bleak scenario to the point of calling on "the army to interfere to control the situation". Many expressed concern that the vibrant public debate that left no political taboo unbroken will come to a sorry end. Abdel-Latif, the Mubarak team member, begs to differ. These are far- fetched conclusions, she said. "Such scenarios mean that the regime will be turning against itself, but there is no retreat from the process of change which has been set in motion," Abdel-Latif insists. Some analysts believe that regardless of the concerns that the elections will be a sham, their outcome predetermined, there is no question that a new dynamic has begun. The crucial issue that will confront the ruling clique, Howeidy points out, is that while it may have helped plant the seeds of change, it could, in the process, be uprooting the very conditions that made one- party rule in Egypt possible for the past five decades. At least, says Howeidy, the current clique cannot continue to rule in the way it has for the past 24 years, and Egyptians will no longer accept to be ruled the same way.
