20111217
Reuters
(Reuters) - At the vanguard of the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak, residents of the Egyptian city of Suez are now desperate for a return of law and order but mistrust in the police force highlights the challenge for the country's new rulers.

Near the burnt-out shells of a police station abandoned in the January uprising, people queued to cast ballots in a parliamentary election, hoping for new leaders able to meet the most basic demand of citizens -- to walk the streets in safety.

"I came to vote because I want an end to the thugs and this lack of security. I can't send my children to their classes," said Suad Hussein, a housewife who voted for the Islamist Freedom and Justice Party.

The January uprising erupted in many Egyptian cities but nowhere was the fighting more intense than in Suez, where high unemployment, rising prices, official corruption and anger at police brutality boiled up into days of deadly street battles.

The police, whose street presence thinned out across Egypt after the revolt, gave an especially wide berth to the volatile city, leaving Suez prey to gunfights, thuggery and theft.

The army has kept a presence in the centre of Suez but police are slowly taking over.

Dozens of voters in the village of Amer near Suez returned to their homes on Wednesday when the owner of a car wash got into a fight with a Bedouin man and shot him.

Seriously wounded, the man was rushed to hospital by ambulance while police and the army arrived to secure the area.

"There is no security since the revolution, like the rest of the country, but it can be felt more in Suez. I don't know why," said Suez port customs worker Mohamed Abdel Rehim, 34.

"My work was badly affected," he said. "When people hear of the absence of security in Egypt, they don't send goods."

The heavily guarded Suez Canal has avoided disruption since the uprising, but Egypt's domestic economy is stagnating after the political unrest while weak security has unnerved foreign investors and deterred potential tourists.

A new prime minister backed by the ruling generals, Kamal al-Ganzouri, has pledged to bolster law and order and his arrival in office last month coincided with a more visible police presence on many of Egypt's streets.

People in Suez see little change here for now, making security a live election issue that may give the edge to conservative parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood that put law and order and public morality at the top of their agenda.

CRIME UPSURGE

The Brotherhood, repressed and routinely rounded up by police under Mubarak, have demanded reform of the force, although other parties also want a sweep-out.

"Until now I don't feel the presence of security," said student Walid el-Sayed. "In recent months, men riding motorcycles have followed women to steal their bags, especially those coming out from banks, apartments were broken into and children were kidnapped."

He said Suez was still waiting for police to return before taking Ganzouri at his word, but when it happens it must be a new generation of law enforcement officers free of corruption.

"The only solution for police is to put all the old guard on a pension and field a new generation," he said.

Popular acrimony towards the authorities has lingered in many Egyptian towns since January, but not all.

In Minufiya, a region north of Cairo in the Nile Delta, residents turning out to vote praised the military for keeping the country together through nine turbulent months.

"The police and the army here are doing a very good job and I understand why there was anger, but when you want to fix a problem, you can't go attack the entire institution that protects us," said 58-year-old worker Zakaria Ali.

But the memory of violence is still fresh in Suez, the first city to mourn a victim of the uprising. Day after day in January, funerals to mourn residents killed by police spiraled into further violence and more deaths.

Abdel Rahman Hamad, a candidate for the small liberal Justice Party, said there was no control in Suez until traffic police appeared recently, and security was on top of the vote agenda.

The jittery atmosphere was underlined on Tuesday when a gunfight broke out in the Al Amal district of Suez, he said.

But residents did not want the police back at any cost.

"We want police to return but in a way that satisfies God. We don't want anyone to be oppressed," said Abdel Rehim.

"We suggest that they are replaced with officers from outside Suez. The police want to return on their own terms, but we refuse that. They can easily be replaced by law graduates."