Egyptians vote for their future on first day of constitutional referendum

A bomb explosion outside the high court in the poor Cairo neighbourhood of Imbaba does not deter Egyptians from voting in the latest constitutional referendum or from going about their daily business.

Traffic in Imbaba is bumper to bumper. We turn from a main street into a narrow alley and park around the corner from our first stop, a polling station at a school. A drift of rubbish stretches along the wall of the building opposite the school, and sand is underfoot.

Young conscripts, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, guard the rickety gate. The Irish Ambassador to Egypt, Isolde Moylan, and I proffer our colour-coded badges before entering a scruffy courtyard where women in headscarves, long skirts and jackets have formed a pulsating queue.

It is the first of two days of voting by Egyptians on a constitution to replace the one adopted during the presidency of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, who was deposed by the army last July. The Muslim Brotherhood is boycotting the referendum.

'National duty'
When the women queuing to vote spot us they begin to ululate in high-pitched voices. One woman pounces, shouting about doing her national duty by voting, phrases she has clearly picked up from television campaign advertisements.

A tall policeman in a spotless blue uniform, two silver stars on his shoulders, escorts us up the stairs and into the voting station, where the presiding judge, Reem Mohamed Thabit, keeps a sharp eye on both voters and officials.

She shows us the ballot, a simple rectangle of paper printed with two circles, red for no and blue for yes. “Women judges are often assigned to polling stations meant for women,” she says.

A stout woman in a black cloak comes to the judge’s desk to press her thumb on an ink pad before going over to the officer recording voter identities on a register.

“She’s illiterate,” the judge remarks as the woman presses her thumbprint opposite her name, takes her ballot and goes to the privacy screen, facing the wrong way round, to mark the ballot, before slipping it into a sealed opaque plastic ballot box. No one seems to be interested in whether she chooses red or blue.

Covered but not cowed, women jostle at the door, call to friends inside the classroom and laugh. Voting is not a duty for them but a party. “Egyptian women!” our policeman remarks as he leads us through the melee.

Serious task
At our second Imbaba school, men, old and young, some in work clothing, are far more subdued as they queue, gravely, proudly. During the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak, ousted in 2011, voting was a joke.

This is no longer the case: voting is deadly serious, even existential. At least 10 people have died on the first day of voting, protesting against the charter that replaces the constitution drafted under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood and adopted during the presidency of Morsi.

A man with a portrait of Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who many Egyptians want to be the next president, is turned away at the gate of this school but appears at the third Imbaba school we visit.

Here the queue is long outside the polling station for Egyptians who do not reside in Cairo. Their identity cards are checked by computer against a central register before they vote.

During previous elections, Egyptians had to go home to vote. A man with a little English tells us: “We are in democracy. Sisi is good, Brotherhood is terrorism.”

Riot police
The imposing court building is surrounded by black-clad riot police in body armour with weapons at the ready. The long arm of a crane hoists workers to the top of a solid column to inspect the damage to the facade wreaked by the early-morning bomb.

The Imbaba market, in the centre of a broad boulevard, is in full swing. Motorised rickshaws dodge between the cars and lorries. Sheep graze on rubbish at the roadside. Fruit stands piled with oranges and custard apples are sheltered from the sun by shabby umbrellas.

All is quiet at the supreme court, a gigantic building with fat, pharaonic columns, as we drive along the Nile corniche to Maadi, a mixed residential area. Banners strung across the road call upon Egyptians to vote Yes. Some banners have a portrait of Sisi, others feature only his gold-braid trimmed hat.

In Maadi we tour more schools, where there are machine gun sand-bagged nests poised on compound walls and roof tops. At the Experimental Language School 500 voted in one station in the morning. The rush is expected after work.

'More cheerful'
At the Physical Education School in upscale residential Zamalek on Gezira island in the Nile, smiling Shahdan Erfan, sporting an electric green vest, is taking a rest from crowd management. "People just want to move on. I am more cheerful by the day. People are not afraid to speak up," Erfan says.

“People are interested in politics. Before the [2011] revolution society did not care.

“The revolution was stolen [by the Brotherhood]. It’s getting back on track.”