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Egypt set for first multi-candidate election

Hosni Mubarak faces nine challengers in Wednesday's historic presidential race

TANTA (EGYPT): The Opposition banged drums and waved orange flags, but many in this teeming Nile delta town are so unused to real campaigns, they thought the recent march was just the circus come to town.

Instead, the rally led by Opposition candidate Ayman Nour was a brief, boisterous example of the dramatic political tide sweeping Egypt.

As the campaign for the country's first contested presidential vote drew to a close on Sunday, voters swung between apathy and a cautious hope that change is in the air.

``It's about time there was more than one candidate,'' said a 36-year-old high school teacher, Ahmed Sherif, who drove 100 km to hear his first-ever speech by a presidential aspirant here.

``We need anything new.''

Break with the past

For more than a half-century, Egyptians have got no closer to choosing their President than voting ``Yes'' or ``No'' for the one candidate on the ballot, in referendums conducted every six years by the country's military-led regime. Until now.

On Wednesday, incumbent President Hosni Mubarak faces a field of nine challengers — at least two with a real chance of gaining votes — in the first multi-candidate election ever.

Calls to reform this politically and economically stagnant country were the backdrop to the change that Mr. Mubarak announced earlier this year, surprising his nation. Yet few believe the new dance with democracy will result in Mr. Mubarak being removed immediately. Instead, many believe that, with the door to change now open, the chance exists that one day someone from outside the military could run the country. ``We have woken up from 24 years of sleep,'' said a 67-year-old Tanta limousine driver, Abdul Hamid Hassanein. ``We are looking for our personal freedoms and democracy.''

Mr. Mubarak (77), and President since Islamic militants assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981, is virtually guaranteed re-election to his fifth six-year term, in part because he is the only leader many of Egypt's 72 million people have ever known.

A farce, say critics

Critics complain his political reforms have not gone deep enough and that Wednesday's elections are designed to simply return him to the presidency.

And his promises to end draconian emergency laws are criticised as window dressing.

Still, Mr. Mubarak is trying to show there is a political race, touring Egyptian cities to press palms, kiss babies, criticise opponents and do everything else candidates do. A major negative for many voters is the barring of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and oldest Islamist movement, depriving several million of Egypt's impoverished, conservative masses of a clear choice.

"Egyptians have no real trust for what is happening and this will continue until all parties, including the Islamists, are allowed to participate,'' said Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst. — AP

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