NEW YORK: Activist Esraa Abdel Fattah urged Egyptian expats to vote in the upcoming elections, as they questioned the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) intention to oversee free and fair elections in a “tweet nadwa” organized in New York City Wednesday.
Abdel Fattah said that Egyptians must give the parliamentary elections a chance, saying that if SCAF failed to guarantee its integrity, it would rally people once more and prompt another uprising.
“The spirit of January 25 will return only if the elections scenario falls through,” she said.
“But I hope the elections are free and fair because this is the fastest route to a civil state,” she said, highlighting the importance of the next parliament.
“We need a civil rule,” she said, “We need to tell SCAF ‘thank you very much but your job here is done,’ and that is why the next parliament is important.”
Earlier this week, Abdel Fattah, the media director of the Egyptian Democratic Academy, received Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year fund award, for her key role in mobilizing Egyptians on Facebook during that country’s uprising.
Amid calls for boycotting the elections and starting a “second revolution,” at the seminar organized by the Egyptian Association for Change (EAC), Abdel Fattah explained that the majority of Egyptians are currently focused on the elections; and that “you have to follow the stream because you can’t lose the public.”
The seminar was labeled “tweet nadwa”, an event devised by Egyptian activists to bring the spirit of debate on the micro-blogging website Twitter to the street.
As registration for expats to vote kicked off on Nov. 10, Mina Ibrahim, an Egyptian psychology and political science student in New York, said he is boycotting the elections so as not to give SCAF any legitimacy.
“I don’t trust SCAF, they are an arm of Mubarak’s corrupt rule,” he told Daily News Egypt.
“We must learn from our mistakes and should’ve never left Tahrir Square,” he said.
While Abdel Fattah acknowledged that SCAF “failed to lead the transitional period,” she dismissed the idea of staying in Tahrir Square after Feb. 11.
“I initially said to myself I wish we’d stayed in Tahrir, but then I figured that no one would’ve stayed,” she said, “The protesters were mobilized behind ‘the people want to topple the regime,’ and when that finally happened they went home.”
On the other hand, Egyptian expat Ahmed Adel Ali, who works as a flight attendant for American Airlines, said that while he plans to participate in the coming elections, both by voting and monitoring the process, he does not think the elections are of “any value.”
“However, any future government must recognize that we [expats] have a voice and must be granted the right to vote in any elections,” he told DNE.
Other expats are still undecided on whether they will participate or boycott the vote. Salma Aboul Magd, a dentist who has lived in New York since 2003, said she is still hesitant but will register to vote nonetheless.
Aboul Magd told DNE that she is “sure the elections will be rigged,” and downplayed the recent decision to allow expats to vote.
“They always give us something to distract us, but I don’t buy it,” she said, “I don’t think our voices will be heard either way.”
‘A different world’
According to Abdel Fattah, the media has long portrayed Egyptian expats as living in a “different world,” disconnected from their motherland.
“But we will change that perception in the coming vote,” she said.
She said participating in the coming elections will send a message to all Egyptians that the expat community is actively involved in rebuilding Egypt, rectifying the image falsely created and deep-rooted by the ousted regime.
Abdel Fattah also urged expats to form popular committees to monitor the elections in their respective countries, explaining that their votes will “change the shape of the elections.”
Military trials and the counter revolution
The case of detained activist Alaa Abdel Fattah created ripples in New York, as a group of Egyptian expats plan a protest next week denouncing military trials.
Abdel Fattah sarcastically said she would support military trials if they succeeded in restoring order to Egypt’s streets.
“There is still unrest even after 12,000 Egyptians were tried in military courts,” she said, adding that neither military trials nor the emergency law are the solution.
“A strategic security plan needs to be put in place,” she said.
She suggested that the security vacuum is intentional as part of the “counter revolution.”
“All members of the former regime are locked up in the same prison together with nothing but time, orchestrating a way out of the ordeal they see as temporary,” she said.
Abdel Fattah finally expressed her faith in the Egyptian people, saying they will never stand for fraud again.
“Let’s keep the second revolution as ‘Plan B,’ and go with the elections,” Abdel Fattah said, “either we win or SCAF wins.”
