Egypt: Who are those People … in the People’s Assembly? · Global Voices
Marwa Rakha

In the aftermath of the Egyptian Parliament going up in flames, people's reactions ranged from utter shock, sadness, to gloating. Blogger Wael Nawara conducted an independent poll asking bloggers, readers, and Egyptian internet users to answer the following question: Does the Egyptian Parliament truly represent the people?
The poll's results were announced today on his blog:
Out of 156 participants,
89% voted that the Egyptian Parliament does not truly represent Egyptians (139 votes)
8% said that the parliament represents the people sometimes (14 votes)
1.3% said that the parliament represents Egyptians most of the time (2 votes)
Nawara also announced that the accuracy of the poll is to be questioned due to the following reasons:
1) A big segment of the Egyptian populations does not use the internet
2) The poll was mainly promoted in opposition circles
3) The sample is small (156 voter)
4) Some people could have voted twice using a different PC
But in conclusion Nawara says:
I believe that this small segment is representative of the opinion of the whole Egyptian population; for example those who took part in the People's Assembly elections in 2005 did not exceed 23% of the voters. 77% of the voters chose NOT to vote. And out of the 23% who did vote, surely some of them were dissatisfied with the results of the elections or the performance of the elected parliament for their own various reasons; thus, it is not too far fetched to see that actually 89% of Egyptians – as per the above mentioned poll – do not think that the parliament represents them and this might explain the diversity of reactions the fire evoked.