Evan Hill

Egyptians head to the polls in Alexandria

Alexandria, Egypt’s coastal second city, was swept with rain on Monday, but that didn't dampen turnout on the first day of Egypt’s marathon elections for both houses of parliament.

The city is a contradiction, a Mediterranean enclave of creaking pensions-turned-hotels, with stocks of Stella beer in the back rooms, but whose new political face is likely to be thoroughly Islamist.

The Muslim Brotherhood has traditionally enjoyed strength here, and the most prominent of the post-revolution Salafi groups, the Nour Party, was born in Alexandria.

These forces were on display on Monday, as the brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) flexed its organisational muscles street by street, and Salafis expressed calm confidence in their chances.

Return to Benghazi

Down the dusty, bumpy road from Tobruk, along which every few miles upended chairs and thick ropes strung across the pavement stand as mute checkpoints – many of them abandoned by their one-time rebel guards – lies Benghazi, the seat of the Libyan uprising, still brave, still mad, incredulous of the predictions of its own demise.

Nearly a month after the onset of foreign air strikes – and my first abrupt departure from free east Libya –the rebel stronghold still stands, logic be damned.

Westbound rebels raise questions

[Photo by Evan Hill/Al Jazeera]

Libyan rebels are moving westward with surprising speed and meeting little resistance, raising questions about the training and dedication – perhaps even the very presence – of troops loyal to longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.

It was long understood here in Benghazi, the rebellion’s capital, that loyalist military units had entrenched themselves around Ras Lanuf, the country’s largest oil refinery, around half an hour west of the rebel-held town of Brega.

But on Friday night, Gaddafi troops withdrew from Ras Lanuf under pressure from advancing rebels. By Saturday afternoon, there were reports of fighting dozens of kilometers farther west, and opposition fighters spoke of attacking Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace and another reputed site of heavy defences.

Election day in Mansoura

While police officers used batons and tear gas to disperse a group of more than 1,000 people trying to observe the vote-counting process in the working-class Nile Delta town of Mahalla an hour down the road, election day in Mansoura reflected the government’s slightly more subtle but equally effective methods of manipulating the vote in Egypt.

Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, a technically banned Islamist group that is nothing if not media savvy, had told us repeatedly that Mansoura would be "hot,” so we arrived the night before to get an early start.