Egyptians Choose Their Leader for First Time in 5,000 Years
It never used to be like this. The moment Egyptians finally lost their respect for President Hosni Mubarak, whose joyless grin dominated their lives for three decades, came when a state newspaper carried a photograph of Middle East leaders at the White House grotesquely photoshopped to show him standing not behind but in front of President Obama.
Now men like Amr Moussa, used to receiving sheikhs and monarchs with due pomp and ceremony as head of the Arab League, and Mohammed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood have waited decades for their chance at power, had to wait behind their fellow citizens, like everybody else.
There were few overt signs of celebration on this, the first of two days of voting in Egypt’s presidential elections, at how everything had changed.
There was enthusiasm that voters would get to choose their leader for the first time in 5,000 years of glorious history, but no whoops or fireworks.
Some of the excitement of the Tahrir Square revolution last year has undoubtedly worn off, and voters are nervous too about what lies in store.
It has not been a clean transition of power, and there is not even as yet a constitution laying out what powers the new leader will have.
Many voters are disappointed with the choice of candidates, even though there are 13 of them - none would be said even by their supporters to have both the hoped-for charisma and a detailed plan to rescue Egypt from poverty and chaos.
But many also seemed to realise this was not such a bad thing - that having a choice at all was as important as how to exercise it; and that, barring some new dictatorship, they would have second chances, to vote out the man they now vote in should he disappoint them.