Notes From Twitter: Euphoria Subsiding in Egypt Elections
Egyptians headed to the polls again this weekend for the final round of presidential elections between Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi and former Mubarak player Ahmed Shafiq. Catherine Cheney compiles analysis and sentiment from the Twitterverse.
"It started 16 months ago with a bang — one hell of a wonderful euphoric bang that left me giddy for months," wrote Ashraf Khalil, an author and correspondent based in Cairo who covered the Egypt elections for Al-Monitor. “Now it feels like it’s ending with a whimper,” he wrote, capturing the sentiment across the Twittersphere on #EgyElex.
Over the weekend, Egyptians cast their votes in the runoff election for president between Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, and Ahmed Shafiq, a Mubarak's last prime minister. The turnout was lower than expected, due to a combination of, among other factors, low enthusiasm and high temperatures.
Despite the differences between the two potential presidents, one a stalwart of the old regime, and the other a part of the principal opposition, disappointed observers said on Twitter and Facebook that neither represents a break with the past. Instead, they often wrote, the revolution has come to an anticlimactic end.
A female taxi driver who took Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, from point A to point B, put it well when she wondered whether the Arab Spring in Egypt was to become an Arab Winter.
