Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Voting girl 2010 edition : shura council elections

And so ladies and gentlemen here is the newest edition from your favorite : Voting Girl in her new season "2010-2011 edition"
Voting girl went today to participate in the Shura council "lower house" elections , already she believed that she must participate in the future of her country as much as possible despite the fact she knows that her vote most probably will not be accounted as the results are pre-made and predetermined in advance but still she believes that it is better than sitting on her ass and complain about the lack of democracy in the country without doing anything.
She was lucky that the elections committees across the country will be open till the 7 PM as she could not leave her work for an hour to vote , she went after work.
She went to her election committee which is in a school with her pink voting id in her pocket and a pen her hand with a determination that she would not In front of the elections committeegive her vote to the NDP candidates in her area. In her way she saw the public buses that transferred the supervisors to the committees parked in front of the school.
A man had stopped her at the entrance asking for her voting ID along with her Personal ID , she asked him who he was and he replied in a way that made her feel not so good :
I am a police officer
She gave him her personal ID along with her Voting ID despite she did not know if it was legal or not ,may be he wanted to check her ID to make sure that she was not using the id of another person. Anyhow he told her that ladies and men have separate committees , she did not know the reason behind this segregation. She was surprised to find that the women'scommittees are on the third and fifth floors and despite her young age she felt that she was going to have a heart attack, still that was just the start. When she reached to the second floor she found out that she had hours to find her name in the registry ; every supervisor had to take her Voting ID to check the names in the list he had and it was very long and hard process.
The names are not arranged alphabetically nor they are filtered. In her search in the committees for her name , she found out that most registered voters from ladies did not come at all , the registries were blank so were the ballot boxes . She could see that there were very few ballot papers through the glass transparent ballot boxes. In one committee the supervisor was very nice and very frustrated for sitting in 40 degrees weather doing nothing waiting for anybody to show up , he told her that she was the second one to come to his committee since the morning and that only one voter called Laila showed up and voted since the morning, Laila's vote was the only ballot paper in the ballot box. She wanted to take a photo for that ballot box but she feared from the reaction of the supervisors especially she heard in the morning that bloggers and journalists were not so welcomed in the committees even with security permissions.
In the third floor there was a competition between two committees on where Voting Girl should vote but at last the details on her Voting ID made her find her way to the ballot box. There were no curtains or privacy Voting girl Shura elections 2010except a little corner. She read all the names in the ballot paper , she did not know anyone except the two NDP candidates in the top and she was determined not to choose them. She chose two she did not know before just because they are not members in the NDP.
she chose those two while she knows very well that they will not make their way to the lower house but still she never gives up. She put the ballot paper wondering if her vote will ever be significant and change her country's future.

10 comments:

  1. I chose to comment as anonymous to say this: I like the content of your posts but your English sometimes is funny and sick that I prefer you stop writing in it.

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  2. thanks for the comment but why you chose to be anonymous

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  3. Who said that every one second langauge should be perfect? You just want Zeinab to stop writing in English so that her words would not be spread all over the world!

    Egyptian-in-USA

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  4. I agree that Z'a English isn't very good but her posts are so valuable and the fact that she takes the time to do some of the research she does is so impressive. I am an English major and I am willing to overlook any language mistakes she makes because the information/data/analysis/opinions/alerts....etc are interesting and very expressive of a large group of Egypt's youth.

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  5. @ Egyptian in USA , thank you so much :)

    @anonymous #2 thank you for your support :)

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  6. Z, I have read your blog everyday now for so many years that I can't remember. I'm English living in the UK and this blog is amoungst the best! thank you dear for all the efforts you put into telling the truth .

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  7. does not matter if her English is bad or funny the point is she got the message out and we all love and appreciate it! Keep it going Z!

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  8. Valuable content and research, yes!

    Opinions, not always! no offense Z, but sometimes you're not very open minded!

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  9. I'm a big fan of ur blog too. I've been following it for like a year now, and it's really valuable.
    Thank u for all ur time and efforts.
    By the way, my "voting" experience yesterday was pretty much like urs. I chose tow candidates that I didn't know too just because they don't belong to the NDP :))

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  10. The poor girl tried hard in her own little way and was not discouraged to go and vote in spite of the known outcome.
    A common tactic oppressive regimes use to discourage people from participating in the political processes is to block them from every participatory avenue until they give up.
    The average Egyptian's first reaction towards a political issue in a conversation is "I'm not into politics". This has been going on since Nasser's time.
    As for your English, It's not the best but it shows that you are courageous and are not self conscious (no complexes) when it comes to express your self and those of others..........keep on trucking!

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