Fresh violence at Cairo’s Tahrir Square wounded 88 people by early Wednesday during the second day of legislative elections.
More than two dozen people were hospitalized after clashes with anti-regime protesters, who have said that the election process cannot be trusted because it is being run by the same officials who brutally dispersed demonstrations last week.
Gunfire was heard and victims were wounded by firebombs, glass bottles and rocks.
The anti-regime protests are either an attempt for a second revolution or a move for anarchy, depending on who is reporting events. Egypt’s official MENA news agency claimed that there were no security forces in Tahrir Square when violence re-erupted Tuesday.
Street vendors said the mayhem was a result of protesters complaining that vendors selling hashish and marijuana were giving the demonstrators a bad name.
Despite the protests, elections continued Tuesday as the Muslim Brotherhood, under the guise of the “Freedom and Justice” party, deployed activists who violated electoral regulations at polling stations to encourage voters to back their party, the most well-organized in the country.
The long election process for delegates to the lower house of the parliament will not be over until January, and several cases of buying votes already have been documented by the Egyptian Association of Human Rights.
Skeptics of the fairness of the elections have noted that the provisional military regime has refused to allow international supervisors to monitor the voting.
For a Copt Christian writer's analysis of the elections, click here.