Egyptians voted on Wednesday in the country’s first ever multi-candidate presidential elections. They no longer had to choose between yes or no for Mubarak, but between ten different candidates. Despite this, however, the day was marked with intense voter apathy.

Egyptians are casting their ballots in the country’s first ever presidential election. And no-one in Egypt doubts who will win.

The incumbent – Hosni Mubarak – who’s been in power for 24 years and is running for another six-year term, faces no real competition from the nine other candidates, most whom are virtually unknown.

The better known ones, such as the leader of the Ghad party, Ayman Nour, and the Wafd party leader, Numan Gumaa, do not enjoy broad public support.

And the only political group that is somewhat popular, the Muslim Brotherhood, is excluded from the race.

Despite the government’s campaign on radio and television to urge people to vote, it is understandable why many Egyptians feel at best indifferent or, at worst, sarcastic.

“What is the point? We all know who is going to win,” said most of those I asked.

The word for voting in Egyptian has two meanings – to “cast a ballot” or “to scream”.

When I asked a taxi driver whether he will vote he chose the latter meaning, while pointing at Cairo’s near permanent traffic gridlock.

There is no doubt who has the biggest financial and political muscle in Egypt’s first presidential race. The streets of Cairo are covered with posters saying “Yes to Mubarak”.

Newspapers, too, are full of whole page advertisements taken out by businessmen saying they support Mr Mubarak.

Some squares are literally covered with Mubarak posters. They are often signed by shopkeepers or businessmen. Some have their pictures next to the incumbent.

Of course Mubarak will win, and there is a great many reasons for this. The story just cited perfectly personifies the Egyptian attitude toward this election from the very start.

When the referendum for a constitutional amendment to allow multi-candidate elections was announced, voter registration for the presidential election itself had already been closed. This means that those whose interest may have been stoked by the possibility of multi-candidate elections could not vote in the elections today. Even if they wanted to participate directly, they can’t. A large percentage of the registered voters, therefore, are Mubarak supporters and government employees.

With just a few months to organize a campaign in a heavily censored environment, opposition candidates like Ayman Nour has very little time to mount a campaign. Also, candidates were not allowed to use negative ads, most of which would have been aimed square at Mubarak himself. The extend to which each candidate could compete with Mubarak on the promotional stage is blindly obvious, with pro-Mubarak posters flooding every avenue of Egypt. He has control of all the resources of the state at his disposal, such as the constant pimping by state television, whereas opposition parties are only of late even being allowed to stage rallies. It’s this disparity that reinforces the long-entrenched voter apathy.

The voting process itself is even taken to shreds by skepticism, as Mubarak even controls the election process itself. This has become increasingly apparent as scores of judges, long stripped of their independence from the government, are reasserting themselves boldly. By constitutional law, judges are supposed to have oversight over the electoral process, but Mubarak set up a central electoral commission that handles all complaints and verifies the results. When the commission wanted to stop NGOs from monitoring the elections, the judges ruled to the contrary. However, the commission decided that it didn’t care what the judges ruled, practically saying that the courts don’t matter. Well, in Egypt, they don’t, but the commission eventually had to go back on its refusal. International observers will also not be present, as the government has said domestic observers will be enough to ensure transparency. American and OSCE observers tend to have very high standards compared to other organizations like the African Union and CIS. So Mubarak, while giving in a bit to U.S. pressure, must be afraid that such observers would have enough leverage with their report to make regime change. Regardless of this, the NGOs and opposition parties are sending out teams to dozens of electoral districts in order to report on the fairness of the election.

A few hours after polling booths were opened to the public, several civil society groups monitoring the election issued preliminary reports stating some irregularities.

“There are a few observations in the first few hours of the voting that concern us,” Mahmoud Aly of the Egyptian Group for Democratic Development, one of the local organisations in the Civil Society Coalition for Monitoring Elections, said.

The group had 178 observers stationed in 72 electoral districts.

“Campaigning is still taking place inside the polling booths and this is a violation of the law organising the elections,” he said, adding that campaigning should have stopped on Monday.

Aly added that some of the booths lacked privacy for voters.

“In any polling booth, voters fill in the ballot behind a curtain, however some booths across the country do not have this. Voters have to fill in the ballots in front of officials and this forms a form of pressure on them,” he explained

According to him some opposition members have already filed reports against the NDP.

“NDP supporters were allowed to vote without voting cards. This occurred in the governorates of Port Said, Ismailiya, al-Beheira and Marsa Matrouh”.

Local civil society groups were able to monitor the electoral process after the Presidential Elections Committee (PEC) announced on Wednesday to allow access to observers. It had previously denied them access inside polling stations.

The country’s National Campaign for Monitoring the Elections (NCME) released a press release with initial observations concerning elections. According to the press release a few polling booths in different constituents did not open on time.

Reports on voter turnout have varied, but no official figures have been released yet.

“Some polling booths are full of voters and others are quiet empty,” Muhammad Shamroukh, journalist of the state owned al-Ahram newspaper, said.

A high turnout was cited early in the morning, but many people were not able to vote due to much confusion, he said.

“Many polling booths have been changed without informing voters on where they should go to vote. As a result many people could not find their names enlisted and thus were not allowed to enter,” he explained.

Shamroukh added that the whole proceedure was being implemented manually, with no computers to sort out voters’ names and thus slowing down the process.

Other violations are also occurring, like people being bribed with food to vote for Mubarak, pro-Mubarak posters being hung in front of polling stations, people campaigning for Mubarak at polling stations despite the legal campaign time having ended on Monday. Mubarak, Mubarak, Mubarak. More and more voting violations will likely come to the forefront over the next few hours and days as investigations are done.

But regardless of violations during the voting stages, the real fraud will certainly occur behind closed doors. While the judges are supposed to have complete oversight of the elections, the electoral commission will oversee the counting of the ballots. Given that Mubarak started the commission, it’s easy to see who they will side with. This very issue was the reason for a judicial rebellion back in May, which saw some 2500 judges swear to boycott the elections unless they were given complete oversight. Without it, anything can be fabricated, and the commission won’t have to truly investigate any claims of fraud.

Can you see why people might be apathetic? They know that Mubarak will win hands down, though a lot can happen between now and Saturday when the results are to be announced. And a lot could potentially happen afterward. While hopelessly predetermined, multi-candidate elections have opened up a broad discussion in Egyptian society, where people are now asking, “What if it wasn’t Mubarak?”

The focus has shifted dramatically, from pan-Arab issues like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to local issues like poverty and education. People are beginning to stop blaming America for their problems, and starting to see it as a reason that these reforms are taking place. Egypt has always been the cultural, intellectual, and economic center of the Middle East at large. The effects of these reforms, even if cosmetic at first, will ripple throughout the entire region as power moves necessarily from the hands of the government to those of the people. This is a ball that, now pushed, can’t be stopped from rolling. Democracy and liberalization are becoming the only way forward from now on.