Summary
28 November 2011
Queues have formed at many polling stations as Egyptians vote in the first elections since President Hosni Mubarak was deposed in February.
Egypt's military government insisted on holding the elections in spite of objections from protestors in Cairo, where some demonstrators died in clashes with riot police.
Reporter
Kevin Connolly
Long queues formed two hours before the official start of voting
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Report
For Egypt's military rulers the decision to press ahead with these elections was a gamble, taken in the anxious days last week when demonstrators were dying in hails of buckshot under clouds of tear gas on the streets of Cairo.
The early indications from polling stations in and around the Egyptian capital is that that gamble has a real chance of paying off. Long, orderly queues began to form two hours before the official start of voting, an indication of the appetite for democracy here, pent-up under decades of autocratic government.
At one polling station the queue was more than eight hundred metres long.
The new parliament is likely to have a strong Islamist block led by the Muslim Brotherhood, Liberal groupings and some reconditioned relics of Hosni Mubarak's old party.
The system is so complicated and protracted that there'll be no results until March, but these elections can be seen as a result in themselves, an outcome of the protests that made the Arab Spring.
Kevin Connolly, 大象传媒 News, Cairo
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Vocabulary
- a gamble
a risky decision taken in the hope of a favourable outcome
- anxious days
worried and tense days
- in hails of buckshot
under heavy gunfire
- tear gas
gas that irritates the eyes and causes it to produce tears
- polling stations
places where people go to vote
- paying off
bringing about a favourable result
- orderly queues
lines where people wait their turn patiently and in an organised manner
- the appetite for democracy
the wish for democracy
- pent-up
not expressed
- protracted
extended
