Question of the Day: Why Bother To Vote?

In his 2005 State of the Union address President Bush cited Egypt as the country that will pave the way for democracy in the Middle East. Three women, unable to sit by while their country is on the brink of drastic change, start a grassroots movement to educate and empower the public by raising awareness on the meaning of democracy. They name their campaign Shayfeen.com which means “we are watching you.” This film follows the highs and lows of the first year of their movement in Egypt. Insisting that only the people can make change happen, their goal is to educate the Egyptian public on what it takes to build the most basic pillars of democracy: demanding basic human rights, freedom of speech and the establishment of an independent judiciary.

In The News

• ABC News recently noted that the disillusionment with democracy has led to people in Australia and Italy reassessing the importance of the democratic model.
• Earlier this year, the BBC reported that an Egyptian blogger was sentence to four years imprisionment "for contempt of religion, insulting the president and spreading false information." This extraordinary story looks at the freedom of expression and the outcry that followed the blogger's imprisionment.
• To read more about critical dissent done by bloggers, take a look at http://norayounis.com and http://arabist.net/arabawy. Both these blogs are good examples of the movement toward dissent on the internet.

For more clips from this movie and from the other Why Democracy? films, check out www.youtube.com/whydemocracy

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