History was written today in Egypt. The first free parliamentary elections in the last 30 years, perhaps 60, one of the mile stone of this controversial revolution. Downtown Cairo appeared to be in an atmosphere of celebration and liberation. People were proudly showing their fingertips stained with the ink at the voting poles.
It was easy to witness the regularity of the vote in the middle class area close to Tahrir, for the military and the police, in charge of the security of the elections, were eager to let the journalists observe. It was more difficult to do the same in the poorer areas of central Cairo, were the military appeared less incline to have foreign media. Nevertheless the people, and in particular the women, made sure that the message we got out of this election was a message of hope for the future. “Today is a great day for Egypt” is the sentence people were saying in every voting pole visited.
Tahrir, which was almost empty in the morning, started to get crowded again in the late afternoon with protesters gathering once again to send their message to General Tantawi.