Egyptians went to the polls in large numbers during mostly peaceful parliamentary elections on Monday, casting their first free ballot in decades, media reports said.
“This is the first real vote,” one voter told Al-Jazeera television.
The last elections, one year ago to the day, saw the re-election of now-ousted President Hosni Mubarak. They were decried as a sham with protests erupting across the country in the wake of the vote.
Some campaigners and officials were worried that violence that has hit the country over the past few weeks would transfer over to the elections.
“We were surprised that people turned out to vote in large numbers,” Abdel Moez Ibrahim, the head of the High Judicial Elections Commission, told Al-Arabiya television.
The military government imposed a fine on people who did not vote, election monitors told the television station.
About one-third of the country went to the polls on Monday in the first of three rounds of voting for the People’s Assembly.
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