Cairo
The Facebook and Twitter revolutionaries are taking a beating at the hands of the Brothers. The results of Saturday’s referendum are now out and they point to a simple truth: the internet was fine as a tool for gathering a few hundred thousand youths in Tahrir Square; but it is largely irrelevant as a means of winning elections across large swathes of Egypt, where three-quarters of the 83 million population have no internet connection at all.
On a massive turnout, and in the fairest vote in the country’s modern history, 77 per cent of Egyptians sided with the Muslim Brotherhood in saying “Yes” to a quick and dirty patch-up of the existing Constitution. This means early elections and a likely clean sweep for established political groups, namely the Brothers and the remnants of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), at a time when the twitterati have yet to organise themselves into coherent political parties.
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