At approximately 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, Cairo’s Tahrir Square was filled with thousands of exhausted protesters listening silently to a 25-minute-long muffled reading of the presidential election results. The summer sun beat down on the Egyptian flags and banners as heat rose from the pavement. But relief, and reward, was soon to come. As the winner was announced the crowd erupted in a volcanic roar of jubilation, the likes of which I had only seen and heard once before, on February 11, 2011: the day Mubarak was toppled.

The crowd now grew at an incredible pace as an avalanche of celebratory newcomers arrived to the square. They euphorically cheered for what seemed to have been an increasingly unlikely prospect: victory for their candidate, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi. Days of speculation following the runoff elections had officially ended, and so had several nerve-wracking days filled with contradictory news leaks and “anonymous sources” making confusing statements. But now, Egypt officially has its first freely and fairly elected civilian president-elect.

However, not everyone was as jubilant. Outside of Tahrir, away from pockets of intermittent celebration, a quieter atmosphere prevailed in Cairo. For some, the mood was somber, even gloomy. Nearly half of Egypt's voters had cast their ballots for Ahmed Shafiq, mostly out of fear of the Muslim Brotherhood and because of a growing distrust of the Islamist group’s politics. Many also voted for Shafiq because they believe only he could bring immediate security and stability to the country.

And an almost equal number of those who voted for Shafiq or Morsi did not even bother to vote at all, exhibiting, in essence, a lack of excitement for either candidate — or the entire political process.