CAIRO: My debut in the Egyptian political process was to participate in the referendum on constitutional amendments. It didn’t go as smoothly as one would have liked but that was expected since I don’t own a voting card.
The government had announced that all citizens of age could vote at their local boroughs using their national identity cards. The ID cards meant they were registered automatically as voters.
My first stop was at Masr Al Gedida Elementary school in Heliopolis where President Mubarak and his family were to cast their votes. The entire school including the entrance was carpeted.
My name wasn’t on the list there so I headed to the police station where my ID card was issued to find out where I should go. All citizens were asked to head their local police stations where booths were set up to give people information.
At the police station I was told my name wasn’t on their list. This was because I was born abroad and thus not automatically registered by the government. I was told however that I could head to any polling station in my district, El Nozha, and vote with my ID card.
At the poll booth of Nabil Al-Waqqad school I was asked for my voting card. Since I didn’t have one I was then asked if my name was on the list. Since it wasn’t, I was told that I could not vote if my name wasn’t on the list – not what I was told at the police station.
Even if my name was on the list, I could not vote at that school because they had divided the voters according to their names, and mine was at another school.
The Abdel-Aziz Al Saud school was where I would vote had I been allowed to (according to the information I had at the time, I wasn’t). At the poll booth I was told that I could not vote without a voting card, even before I said my name wasn’t on the list. I asked if I could vote with my ID and the response was “who told you that?
Apparently at this poll station, an ID card was not enough even if my name was on the list.
Disheartened I walked out when a genial official at the gate asked me whether all was well. When I told him that I couldn’t vote because was my name was not on the list he directed me to another school nearby, which was especially for citizens who were not born in Egypt nut carried a national ID.
So it was finally at the Salah Al Din school that I was able to cast my vote. I found the relevant room. After I cast my ballot in the privacy of a curtained space, and inserted through the slit in the box, I was told to dab my thumb in non-washable ink to prove and prevent multiple voting.
I noticed that the room where I cast my vote was supervised by two teachers – no judicial authority was anywhere near that particular ballot box.
At the end of a day of traipsing around looking for polling stations I had managed to play my “patriotic role .
On the plus side things were generally benign, as the turnout was minimal in all the stations I visited and the authorities were generally pleasant and helpful.
They could afford to be as the voters were just a trickle at best.
