Story published November 28, 2011 by GlobalPost:

CAIRO – In the aftermath of a week of violent protests in Tahrir Square, Egyptians head to the polls Monday hoping to take a step closer to establishing a new democracy.

A protest movement in January may have led to the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak, but most Egyptians are left wondering how much has actually changed. Were the heady days of street demonstrations truly a revolution or a popular uprising that has resulted in a military takeover?

Political reform has moved at a snail’s pace. Some of the most brutal hallmarks of Mubarak’s autocratic regime have returned, including arbitrary detention, military trials and torture.

And an already stagnating economy is deteriorating amid ongoing workers’ strikes and sporadic violence.

Many now blame the country’s ruling military leaders, the once revered Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed power in the transition following Mubarak’s departure.

“We are all united with one hand against the military,” said Ahmed Gheith, a 22-year-old Muslim Brotherhood member who was at a recent protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “Egyptians should be able to choose whomever they want to lead our country.”

For the most part, Egyptians are optimistic that the final stage of their revolution will take place at the ballot box. The hope is that these elections will be a departure from the Mubarak-era, when voting was often marred with violence, ballot box stuffing, and other fraudulent activities.

But at the first polls on November 28, they will encounter a new electoral process that observers have called convoluted, confusing, and mismanaged.  Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this piece written by GlobalPost yesterday:

It was within hours of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fleeing Tunisia that GlobalPost Cairo correspondent Jon Jensen began reporting on reverberations in Egypt — on the protests, the clashes, and the drive to eventually oust President Hosni Mubarak from power.

Jensen lived in an apartment just off Tahrir Square and used his neighborhood connections, his competency in Arabic and resourceful reporting to capture many of the key turning points of the 18 days of the revolution. With the great power of immediacy that is the strength of reporting on the web, Jensen provided video almost instantly even recording events in Tahrir Square from his balcony. He used Twitter and a live blog to cover the story for us, and also did the hard work of sitting down to write thoughtful analysis and detailed dispatches from the scene day in and day out as the revolution unfolded throughout the year.

Read the whole article here.

Here’s a live blog I ran for GlobalPost during the second round of Egypt’s 2011 parliamentary elections.

Story published December 2, 2011 by GlobalPost:

Story published November 29, 2011 by GlobalPost:

CAIRO, Egypt — Egyptians came out in record numbers to vote this week in round one of the country’s parliamentary elections, the first since the ouster of the autocratic former president, Hosni Mubarak, in February.

Thousands of voters waited patiently in seemingly endless lines at polling stations around the capital, eager to dip their fingers in the purple phosphoric ink to signify that they had cast a ballot in the nation’s historic race.

Unofficial estimates, including government reports in state media, placed the voter turnout at well over 50 percent just after the final polls closed on Tuesday.

Overall, Egyptians seemed confident that this latest vote was a drastic departure from the murky days of Mubarak-era elections, which were frequently marred by fraud and vote-rigging.

And they were optimistic that the country was finally clearing its first significant hurdle in the long transition to democracy. Read the rest of this entry »

Story published November 28, 2011 by GlobalPost:

Story published November 23, 2011 by GlobalPost:

CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt’s ruling military general pledged to transfer political power to a civilian government by mid-2012, one of several concessions that appeared aimed at containing the growing protest movement and prevent a revolt that has raged in downtown Cairo for 5 days from spreading further.

Mohamed Tantawi, the country’s top army commander, who assumed the de facto presidency in February, made the announcement in his first televised speech to the nation.

Tantawi assured the Egyptian people that parliamentary elections would proceed as planned, scheduled to begin on Nov. 28. And he repeatedly promised that neither he, nor anyone in Egypt’s military, would seek for higher office.

“We are not looking into the presidency,” said Tantawi, in a pre-recorded statement on state television Tuesday.
“The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is only interested in the interests of the people. We don’t care about who will win elections or who will be the next president. It’s up to the people to decide,” he said.

But the proposed concessions failed to quiet protesters on the street, who have now been clashing with security forces for more than 96 hours.

Immediately following the televised speech, which was broadcast throughout Tahrir Square, furious demonstrators began screaming, “Leave, leave!” Read the rest of this entry »

Story published November 18, 2011 by GlobalPost:

CAIRO, Egypt — When Gameela Ismail brought her tiny political campaign to the winding back alleys of Boulak on a recent weekday night, the otherwise quiet working-class neighborhood erupted into an impromptu and raucous celebration of democracy.

An old man jumped onto the candidate’s makeshift stage and belted out a patriotic song. Dozens of men at nearby sidewalk cafes joined in, laying down their hookah pipes to clap along to the revolutionary lyrics.

Ismail, a 45-year-old former TV presenter who is now running for parliament, took questions from the lively crowd on subjects ranging from unemployment to rising food prices to security.

Of course, Ismail didn’t have all of the answers. But it didn’t really matter to the people listening. They were just happy to be participating in the kind of political activity would have been impossible during the reign of former president Hosni Mubarak.

“Last year was the end of an extremely dark age we were living in. We didn’t have any horizon,” said Ismail, who also ran and lost in 2010. “This election is going to be different. Now there is something for Egyptians to look forward to.”

But beneath the surface are worrying signs that some of the old electioneering habits of Mubarak and his National Democratic Party (NDP) are alive and well, among both candidates and the transitional military rulers, who appear increasingly reluctant to give up too much power. Read the rest of this entry »

Story published November 4, 2011 by GlobalPost:

CAIRO, Egypt — One year ago, Mahmoud Salem wrote about Egypt’s elections with cynicism and disillusionment.

The 30-year-old Egyptian blogger, best known for his irreverent political musings on his blog, “Rantings of a Sandmonkey,” warned his readers at the time that the “cartoonish” 2010 parliamentary elections would be rigged by Egyptian authorities.

“Don’t forget to go to the polls and vote for two people on your ballots. That might invalidate your vote, but at least it won’t allow them to steal it,” Salem wrote last year.

That was in a different Egypt, long before the Jan. 25 uprising when Salem joined hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in a successful revolt against the autocratic rule of Hosni Mubarak.

Nine months later, Salem is no longer criticizing the system — he’s participating in it. He is running for parliament in the mostly middle-class Cairo district of Heliopolis under the banner of Free Egyptians, a newly established secular political party. Read the rest of this entry »

Story published October 27, 2011 by GlobalPost:

TABA, Egypt — An Israeli man detained for more than four months in Egypt on espionage charges returned home on Thursday, as part of a coordinated prisoner exchange. Twenty-five Egyptians were released from detention centers in Israel as part of the deal.

The alleged spy, 27-year-old Ilan Chaim Grapel, was flown from Egypt to Israel Thursday afternoon. The Egyptian detainees, three of whom were minors, were bussed across this sleepy Sinai border post from the Eilat region of Israel shortly after their release on Thursday.

Grapel, who also holds American citizenship, was freed following weeks of high-level diplomatic negotiations between officials from Egypt and Israel, in a deal brokered by the United States.

The talks that led to the prisoner swap could be a major step towards repairing a recently strained relationship between Cairo and Tel Aviv that intensified three months ago because of events not far from this border crossing.

On Aug. 18, Israeli soldiers crossed into the desolate Sinai desert just north of Taba and killed five Egyptian border guards during a botched manhunt for militants that attacked vehicles in Israel earlier that day. Read the rest of this entry »