Egypt holds first elections post-Mubarak

For Egypt's military rulers the decision to press ahead with these elections was a gamble, taken in the anxious緊張焦慮 days last week when demonstrators were dying in hails of buckshot強烈攻擊 under clouds of tear gas on the streets of Cairo.

The early indications指示 from polling stations in and around the Egyptian capital is that that gamble has a real chance of paying off贏得勝利. Long, orderly queues有秩序地排隊 began to form two hours before the official start of voting, an indication of the appetite for democracy民主的渴望 here, pent-up壓抑 under decades of autocratic獨裁的 government.

At one polling station投票站 the queue was more than eight hundred metres long.

The new parliament is likely to have a strong Islamist block led by the Muslim Brotherhood, Liberal groupings and some reconditioned翻新 relics文物 of Hosni Mubarak's old party.

The system is so complicated and protracted持久 that there'll be no results until March, but these elections can be seen as a result in themselves, an outcome of the protests that made the Arab Spring阿拉伯之春.

Kevin Connolly, BBC News, Cairo

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2011/11/111128_witn_egypt_elections.shtml