The only places in Egypt that aren't crowded

are the polls. Local elections were held yesterday, but almost no one bothers to vote in a country that has elected the same president in a landslide victory for over 25 years.

A friend who works at the US Embassy went to several polling sites to "observe." Observers were not allowed into many of the sites, but were still able to see NDP (the ruling "National Democratic Party") workers literally "cramming" the ballot boxes.

The NDP hands voters a card that allows them to match the faces of candidates with a symbol to represent them so that persons who can't read can still vote. Then people show a handwritten ID card, check the symbols they wish to support, and place their ballots in a central collection box.

The whole thing is really a ridiculous farce, as the NDP announced before the voting occurred that they had received 70% of the votes. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the elections, and my observing friend said that she only saw 3 actual people cast ballots all day. Below is a photo of an elections worker; you can see that it is deserted, and in the foreground you can see the empty glass ballot box:

This is an excellent article that recaps all of the recent unrest both within Cairo and in the textile factories outside of it, and gives the shortest accurate summary that I have seen of the political situation: An excerpt:

Thousands of people, including factory workers, junior office clerks, young people skipping school and political activists, marched through the streets of Mahalla al-Kobra on Sunday evening. Their numbers included those who had always been poor, and those who had watched the rising cost of living in Egypt eat into their modest prosperity.

They wanted to protest against the rising price of bread and demand an increase in their salaries. However hundreds of uniformed policemen and thugs in civilian clothes put paid to the dream of a peaceful protest. Police used tear gas and there were reports of shots being fired. The demonstrators responded by throwing bricks. Some took advantage of the chaos to carry out looting -- two schools went up in flames and computers and air-conditioning units were stolen.

The death toll at the end was at least two people, who were killed when a tear-gas grenade exploded next to them. Around 80 demonstrators were injured, some of them seriously, and police made around 150 arrests.

The street battle in Mahalla al-Kobra, located one and a half hours by car from Cairo, on Sunday evening might be considered normal in other parts of the Middle East. However such scenes are rare in the tightly run regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The government well remembers the bloody bread riots in the 1970s. Then, too, crowds gathered because food prices were rocketing. Hundreds of people died in the unrest. (Emphasis added).

It has been business as usual around Cairo, though, and you would never know that anything is happening elsewhere in the country.