Ibrahim Seweilam, an Egyptian living in oil-rich Saudi Arabia for 18 years now, is particularly happy these days. "For the first time in my life, I feel proud of being Egyptian after getting the right to vote in my country's elections," Seweilam, 52, said.
"Millions of Egyptians working abroad feel grateful for the January 25 revolution for forcing the (Egyptian) officials to give us the vote right for the first time ever," Seweilam told dpa. He was referring to a popular revolt that swept former president Hosny Mubarak from power earlier this year.
In October, the Supreme Administrative Court in Cairo ordered authorities to "take all necessary measures" to ensure that Egyptian expatriates "exercise their constitutional right to vote in all elections." The landmark ruling ended long decades of an official ban depriving Egyptian expatriates of suffrage.
The military rulers, who took over after Mubarak, issued earlier in November a constitutional amendment to allow the expatriates to vote at Egyptian embassies in the countries where they reside. According to government figures, more than 100,000 out of an estimated 8 million living abroad voted last week in the first round of the country's parliamentary elections, the first since Mubarak's overthrow. The majority of the voters were in the three Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, said the Foreign Ministry. There were no official figures about the Egyptians who possibly voted in Western countries.
But only expatriates having identity cards issued in Egypt before September 27, 2011 and registered at the Egyptian embassies are allowed to vote in the parliamentary elections. According to the Foreign Ministry, only 1.5 million Egyptian expatriates are registered at embassies in their countries of residence.
The second and third rounds of the six-week polls are set for mid-December and early January. The new parliament is to select a panel to draft a new constitution for Egypt. To Abeer, an Egyptian journalist working in the United Arab Emirates, many like her did not get enough time to register for the current vote.
"I live in Dubai and it was hard for me to go to Abu Dhabi, where the Egyptian embassy is located, to register, given the short notice announced by the commission in charge of the elections," she said. However, Abeer is happy that at last "we will have a say in how Egypt should be like."
Al Nakib Centre for Training and Democracy Support, a non-governmental group, has said in a report that several Egyptians were not able to register for elections due to the limited deadline and the poor format of a website of the electoral commission onto which they had to log to get basic information.
"The site is only in Arabic, a matter that badly affected non-Arabic-speaking Egyptians," added the Cairo-based centre. Remittances from Egyptians working abroad are a key source of the national economy. The Central Bank of Egypt has said they reached 9.7 billion dollars in 2010. The figure is expected to rise to 13 billion dollars by the end of the year, according to Mahmoud Omara, a professor of political economics.
"The Egyptians working abroad are enthusiastic for increasing the money they send to the homeland to help revitalize the national economy after the revolution," said Omara, who has lived in France for 30 years. "They are also interested in investing in all sectors in the homeland. But they are discouraged by cumbersome regulations at home that must be revamped to prove that Egypt is moving on for the better."Omara suggests allocating a number of seats in the parliament for lawmakers representing Egyptians living abroad. "Those deputies will raise issues of concern for expatriates in the parliament," he said. "This is already applied in Tunisia and Algeria," added Omara.