In Cairo’s Garbage City — as with many other places in Egypt — there is little optimism about the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. “We don’t know anybody. We only know Mubarak,” says Hani Shanouda, a 26 year-old member of Cairo’s 60,000-strong Coptic Christian garbage collecting community, the Zabbaleen. Like many others in this slum, Shanouda will most likely not be voting on either ballot. In Egypt’s current situation it is increasingly difficult to discern between those who did not vote as a political statement and those who stayed away from the polls for other reasons. In 2005’s parliamentary elections, less than nine million Egyptians voted — representing almost a third of registered voters but only about 11 percent of Egypt’s population of 77.5 million at the time. The presidential elections that year saw only seven million go to the polls. There are a number of reasons why Egyptians don’t
Josh Wood is a journalist based in Boston. He was previously based in Beirut, where he was a correspondent for The National. His work focuses on refugees, US foreign policy and conflicts in the Middle East.
