Why I think you should vote

Tomorrow the first stage of the parliamentary elections start, and some people who have the right to vote won’t be voting. Some of them out of apathy, disinterest, cynicism and some out of an active conscious decision to boycott the elections. In all cases I think you should vote and here is why.

The current situation in Egypt is very chaotic. No one has real legitimacy, but everybody claims they do. SCAF says they’ve taken over from Mubarak who was legit and that the people approved their vision in the referendum (although the referendum had nothing to do with that). Tahrir says we have legitimacy because we’re many, we’re in the street, we’re calling for what’s right and we are the ones who toppled the dictator. The Sofa party (silent masses) say they have legitimacy because they are the majority of the people and so no one else should be speaking for them. The presidential candidates, well they’re just popular and have some sort of social standing. The MB are apparently the biggest most organised group of people in the country and they claim street power. The political parties claim legitimacy, because god knows why. The list goes on.

Bottom line is all these people for one reason or another think they should be heard and want things to go their way, and they are the current actors in this huge theatre.

So far it looks like the elections are going ahead anyway, and after the elections we will have a new player: Parliament. No one really knows what power this parliament will have, especially after SCAF came out and said that it will be doing very little, and that SCAF will have many checks against its power.

What we have seen during the last 10 months is that things change every day. Each actor wants their own self interest, and they’re playing the game to get as much of it as possible. SCAF wants to retain as much power to protect its members and keep as much of the status quo as possible, the MB want as much political control as possible, the liberals want… and so on.

Each and every party has tried to make moves to turn their vision into reality. And each and every party has made moves to block the other parties from getting what they want. It’s been back and forth for so long and no one knows where it will end. SCAF can make an announcement today and take it away tomorrow. The MB change their stance every three seconds as they see fit for the moment. There is nothing that’s set in stone. And once parliament is formed there is no saying what its powers will be and what it will do, although this will be largely affected by its make-up.

Tomorrow you have a chance to change the future by helping decide what the make up of this new player will be. And this will change the whole game afterwards. What I can tell you is that the more people you are in favour of get into parliament, the more likely things will go your way. So go out there and vote for the people you want.

After parliament is set, the game continues, and we’ll have to use all other tools of political leverage, like protest, sit-ins, the media, etc.. to move the country towards the path we see best fit. The elections are but a small part of the chess board, and we shouldn’t leave it for others to use it against us.

This all reminds me of the winter sport curling, a sport many might not be familiar with. A player slides a rock on ice, and then lets it go. They aim for it to stop in the centre of a circle further down. Once you’ve thrown the rock, you have to rely to two team members with brooms, who scrub the ice infront of the sliding rock to affect its path. You see, you don’t just slide the rock and forget about it, you still have to actively guide it.

You don’t just cast your vote and wait for everything to fall in place, you have to actively guard the election process and then guide parliament to get the power it deserves and the power you want it to have. Elections and parliament are one tool in the box, let’s not give it up.