latest vote totals

But now I read that this doesn’t even include Cairo and Giza yet, so there are still a ton of votes to be counted:

Mursi 4,406,782 (26.48 per cent)
Shafiq 4,115,840 (24.74 per cent)
Sabbahi 3,329,519 (20.01 per cent)
Abul-Fotouh 2,959,937 (17.79 per cent)
Moussa 1,778,244 (10.69 per cent)

Judging from the number of signs Morsi has around Cairo, he’ll still be in the top two. I saw very few Shafik posters in Cairo, but do know that plenty of people are voting for him.

A number of surprises here, but the two biggest are the strong showing for Sabbahi and the dismally weak showing for Moussa, whose supporters seem to have fled to Shafik.

If I had a vote and the runoff were between Morsi and Shafik, I’m afraid I couldn’t stomach either of them. I hate having a position like that, because I generally hate it when people try to outflank everyone else and claim the beautiful soul high ground. But I just don’t see how I could cast a vote for either of those two, even if holding my nose closed with clothespins. Which would you choose: total control of government for the Brotherhood? Or Mubarak’s Counter-Revolutionary Prime Minister who has boasted that the army can clear the streets in 5 minutes anytime we ask them to? 

latest vote totals

With 18 of 27 governorates counted, the Nasserist candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi is indeed the surprise of the election so far. Amr Moussa looks to be headed for a surprise career-ending flop. He’s too old to bounce back from this sort of punishment from voters, which is all the more humiliating given the success of Shafiq (i.e., Moussa isn’t just rejected for being a Mubarak leftover, because Shafiq is every bit as much of one.

“13:30 Final results aggregated by Ahram Online of counted votes in 18 out of 27 governorates (Daqahliya, Sharqiya, Alexandria, Beheira, Gharbiya, Minya, Sohag, Menoufiya, Kafr El-Sheikh, Qena, Beni Suef, Aswan, Damietta, Luxor, Port Said, Suez, Red Sea and South Sinai) show that with 41.6 per cent turnout, Brotherhood candidate Mursi is in first place, followed by Mubarak’s last prime minister Shafiq, while the Nasserist candidate Sabbahi, the surprise of this election so far, has fallen back into third place – after the totals of Sharqiya and Sohag governorates were announced. The results thus far are as following:

 

Mursi 3,451,433 (25.59 per cent)

Shafiq 3,378,998 (25.05 per cent)

Sabbahi 2,862,143 (21.22 per cent)

Abul-Fotouh 2,362,956 (17.52 per cent)

Moussa 1,431,239 (10.61 per cent)”

early voting results

This was taken from Ahram Online:

“3:18 A top judicial source tells Al-Ahram’s Arabic-language news website that 1,750 out of more than 13,000 polling stations have returned the following results:

Mursi 1,000,000+
Shafiq 740,000
Abul-Fotouh 690,000
Sabbahi 545,000
Mousa 480,000”

That’s not even 15% of the vote in so far. But if this holds up, then it’s been a dismal performance from Amr Moussa, who at several points in the past month looked like the possible frontrunner.

What happened? The conventional wisdom is that Moussa voters shifted to Shafik as a more hardline anti-Islamist figure. Moussa may also have suffered from his (well-deserved, in my opinion) reputation as a shifty opportunist.

If it had ended up as Aboul Fotouh vs. Moussa, as expected until recently, it would have been roughly Islamist Lite versus Mubarak Lite. But if those two are replaced in the runoff by Mursi and Shafik, then we’re moving a couple of steps away from the “Lite” in both cases, and are headed for a far more polarizing runoff next month than had seemed to be the case.

But again, we’re still seeing less than 15% of the vote having been counted so far.

Sabbahi is the basically Nasserist anti-Mubarak activist, and arguably the most anti-Western candidate among the top five.

speculation about how the Egyptian election is going

You can read it HERE.

Voting is still open today.

In other news, Ahmed Shafiq has been charged with violation of election law. Campaigning was supposed to end on Monday, but Shafiq held a press conference yesterday to dispel rumors that he had been shot and was in a coma. Read about that strange incident HERE.

creepy interview with a creepy person

Omar Soliman, Mubarak’s former intelligence chief and Revoluton-era Vice President, says a military coup is “very possible.” And I’m sure he’d just hate for that to happen, wouldn’t he?

Interview HERE.

one Egyptian eyewitness reports on the voting

“I just voted! Turnout was remarkably low compared to the parliamentary elections. I don’t know if it is because everyone else arrived much earlier, because it is not a national holiday and so most people are planning to take their brief time to vote tomorrow, the day before the weekend, or if because they are disillusioned with the candidates or value of electoral process after the results of the parliamentary elections. I literally walked right in and did not have to wait in line, though there was a short line for those issued a different number from the government than I had. They also were mostly senior citizens or closing in on that. Perhaps they are not working and it goes with the idea that people are working and will vote tomorrow. And I hope not making this a holiday wasn’t a move by the military to decrease turnout, which could somehow serve them, though I don’t know how. I’ll hold off conspiracy theories and hope for the best.”

Ahram Online on the Coptic support for Moussa and Shafik

More about it HERE.

an article on Ahmed Shafik

THIS PIECE comes from Time, and it also hints at the sense that Shafik may be enjoying a surge in popularity and could even end up in the runoff.

Here are some quotes from the story reflecting why I don’t like Shafik:

“Within five minutes, the armed forces gave an example of what they can do when they want to cleanse an area,” he told TV presenter Wael Abrashi in an interview last week, promising to crack down on the frequent anti-military protests that he says block traffic and stifle productivity.”

Here’s a sampling of his supporters:

“I like him for one reason only: I want someone to face off against the Muslim Brotherhood,” says Rageb Abdel Waris, who works in military production. Another Shafik supporter, a retired army officer named Awad Ahmed Mohamed, took it one step further: “He should put [the Islamists] back in prison because that’s where they belong.”

I don’t want the Brotherhood to win either, but I have a big problem with saying that they belong in prison. A tiny fringe of the more extreme Islamist parties may well belong in prison –based on their past deeds rather than their politics– but to call for the Brotherhood to be thrown back into jail is simply a call for a return to pre-Revolution Egypt. And there’s simply no way the public is going to stand for that. It could be something like civil war in that case.

NY Times on the pre-election atmosphere in Egypt

An informative piece, HERE.

I’m becoming more and more excited about the election as time goes by (unfortunately, I will be out of Egypt on a brief vacation that was scheduled before I realized when the election would be, and then I will be visiting family in theU.S. and Canada at the time of the june runoff; I’d like to see one of the two rounds up close, but as fate had it, I will not).

Every time I ride in a Cairo taxi these days, I only wait a couple of minutes before asking, in the tones of an utterly clueless visitor, who the next President will be. What I really want to know, of course, is who each driver personally favors, but I pitch the question in more impersonal, factual form as an invitation to the expression of personal views. Some drivers still don’t want to touch the question, but many warm to the question with enthusiasm, as if they were discussing their favorite football team. But unlike with football teams, they seem to be going through a more falsifiable decision-making process with the candidates, with many Egyptians I know having already changed their minds on the basis of speeches and platforms: exactly how democracy is supposed to work. It’s quite reassuring to watch how seriously everyone is taking this election.

This is Egypt’s first Presidential election since… I guess since the dawn of history. The Pharaohs obviously never stood for election, nor did any of the Imperial foreign occupiers of Egypt. And Mubarak’s elections were nothing but orchestrated shams that often included bearded Islamists being beaten in the polling lines to scare them away. Perhaps the most cynical thing Mubarak ever said was after the ludicrous December 2010 elections, just prior to the Revolution, in which all parties other than Mubarak’s NDP received close to zero seats in parliament. Mubarak’s response when asked about this? “As the head of the NDP, I am of course very happy. But as an Egyptian, I am sad that the other parties could not do better.” The laughter by Egyptians in response to that statement was worth recording.

In any case, how could you not be happy that a people who have endured 5,000-6,000 years of having both domestic and foreign rulers imposed upon them finally get a chance to choose their own leader? It’s heartwarming in the most basic, straightforward sense. No wonder there’s so much hope and enthusiasm here.

My taxi driver this morning was an Ahmed Shafik fan. Everyone I’ve met so far who supports Shafik is a Coptic Christian, so perhaps my driver today was a Copt as well. They seem to trust him, for whatever reason, and you can’t blame the Copts for voting for safety first at a time like this. Their legitimate protest march last fall ended up with their being the victims of a cruel massacre on the streets of Cairo, more or less cheered on by state TV. In fact, quite a number of Copts have emigrated outright since the Revolution. There’s a chance that someone with “Brotherhood” or “ex-Brotherhood” on their c.v. will be the next President, and I wouldn’t be too happy about that either if I were an Egyptian Christian.

That said, I can’t support Shafik in the least. He was Mubarak’s Prime Minister during the Revolution, after all. If he didn’t actively participate in shooting live ammunition at protestors, organizing the Battle of the Camel, etc., then he at least looked the other way while his mates at the Cabinet table were planning it. He never resigned in protest, but gave his endorsement to Mubarak by serving as Prime Minister just at the moment when Mubarak proved himself to be at his worst by beating and killing peaceful protestors by the score.

Shafik is probably also the candidate that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces wants to win, and I see no reason to give them what they want. The Army is severely tarnished by the events of the past year in the eyes of many, including my own eyes.

some good Detroit techno

Robert Hood, “Chase” (1994). I was at a Toronto club that Hood d.j.’ed in 1998, and was completely unaware at the time of who he was. I’ve always regretted not knowing in advance, but he was amazing anyway.