Divided post-revolution Egypt heads to the polls

An Egyptian anti-military protester in Tahrir Square in Cairo Post-revolution Egypt, divided by political differences and violence, heads to the polls on Monday at the start of a chaotic election process to usher in democracy in the Arab world's most populous nation.
Ten months after popular protests ended 30 years of autocratic rule by Hosni Mubarak, in one of the seminal events of the Arab Spring, up to 40 million voters are being asked to choose a new parliament.
Voting will take place in three stages beginning on Monday in the main cities of Cairo, Alexandria and other areas in a drawn-out procedure that will finish in March and that has been criticised for its complexity.
The backdrop is ominous after a week of new protests calling for the resignation of the interim military rulers who stepped in after Mubarak's fall. Forty-two people have been killed in the latest flare-up and more than 3,000 injured.
In the early hours of Monday, saboteurs blew up a pipeline supplying gas to Israel, another reminder of the threat to the country's stability.
Masked gunmen planted explosives under the pipeline west of the town of El-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, witnesses told the official MENA news agency. It was the ninth such attack since this year.
On Sunday however, 18-year-old student Raghda was looking forward to voting.
"It's our first chance to vote and the vote will have a value," Raghda told AFP in Tahrir Square, the cradle of Egypt's revolution where hundreds of thousands forced Mubarak's downfall.
The election itself looked in danger last week as unrest gripped the country, but military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi has stuck to the schedule and called for a large turnout.
Much remains unclear about how the new parliament will function and whether it will be able to resolve a standoff with the armed forces over how much power they will retain under a new constitution to be written next year.
In the absence of polling data and a precedent for the vote, the results are difficult to call, but a party set up by the formerly banned Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is expected to emerge as the largest single grouping.
Hardline Islamists, secular parties and groups representing the interests of the former Mubarak regime are all expected to win seats, raising the prospect of a highly fragmented and ideologically split new parliament.
The stakes could not be higher for Egypt, the cultural leader of the Arab world, but the conduct and results of the election will also have repercussions for the entire Middle East at a time of wrenching change.
"For most Arabs, the primary examples of democratic processes in the Arab world are in Iraq and Lebanon," said Bruce Rutherford, a Middle East specialist and author on Egypt at the US-based Colgate University.
"In both cases, elections produced weak, fragmented, and largely ineffectual governments.
"If Egypt produces the same result, then the appeal of democracy in the region may be weakened. However, if the Egyptian experience is positive... the effect could be very powerful."
Egypt, with a fast-growing population of more than 80 million, is a former British protectorate ruled by military leaders for most of its history since independence in 1922.
The fresh protests last week stemmed from fears that Tantawi and his fellow generals, initially welcomed as a source of stability in the days after Mubarak's fall, were looking to consolidate their power.
They have pushed back the original timetable for handing over power to a civilian government and have demanded a final say on all legislation concerning the army in the future.  
Critics say they have also been too quick to resort to the repressive techniques of the Mubarak regime, jailing dissidents and unleashing deadly violence on protesters, in a bid to maintain stability.
Meanwhile, the leading new civilian powers -- the pro-democracy movement in Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood and future presidential hopefuls Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Mussa -- have been caught in the uncertainty.
The Tahrir movement is deeply divided over whether to take part in the elections and lend legitimacy to the military rulers, while the Muslim Brotherhood has supported elections from which it expects to capitalise.
The ruling military council "must task the party which gains the biggest number of seats to form the next government," Brotherhood spokesman Mahmud Ghozlan told AFP on Sunday in a sign of their confidence.
After two days of voting in the first stage of the elections for the lower parliament, other cities and regions will follow on December 14 and January 3.
After these, another round of voting will take place from January 29 for the the upper house of parliament and presidential elections are to be held by no later than the end of June next year.
Mubarak, who is on trial for murder and corruption in Cairo along with his two sons, is expected to follow events on Monday from a military hospital in the capital where he is reportedly being treated for cancer.