''It took me more than 300km to come here and ask my question. And so I will.''
These were the words of a young Tunisian student taking part in Saat Hisab, the Arabic version of the BBC's flagship Question Time.
In Tunisia, the BBC World Service Trust and BBC Arabic produced the show in partnership with Tunisian television two weeks before the parliamentary elections; the first free elections in the history of the country and the first after the revolution.
"I want to ask my question." This time we heard it in Egypt, in El-Menya, a governorate 270km south of Cairo, where Saat Hisab gathered 200 Egyptians from all the Upper Egypt governorates; the most neglected and unsettled part of the country.
Whether in Tunisia or Egypt (below), the audience came to our studio in the hope that the BBC programme would give them an opportunity - for the first time ever - to question their politicians and officials.
In Tunisia, we had two programmes for an hour and-a-half each. All our requests for the audience to keep quiet in the studio during the recording failed. They were loud, talking over each other and over the panel. A typical first exercise in democracy and freedom of speech.
Radhia, a 21-year-old Tunisian student, shouted, asking for the microphone. "I came a very long way," she said. "I have a question and I won't leave until I ask the panel."
Zein Tawfiq, our presenter, could not but listen to her and let her ask the panel - six prominent politicians representing the political spectrum in Tunisia, from the Islamist Al Nahda movement to the Labour Communist party. They all had to answer her questions.
In El-Menya, our panel included three governors, top officials in Egyptian governorates. For the first time, they sat together on the same panel with a young Christian man and a woman activist. For the first time, the officials faced an audience questioning them on security, education, why they cannot find fuel, and the role of the military ruler in post-revolution Egypt.
"Can you tell me how I can sustain my family?" Mohamed, a fisherman who came wearing a traditional long jilbab, asked them.
The recording went for an hour and-a-half - and, once finished, the audience refused to leave. They wanted to continue.
Saat Hisab in both Tunisia and Egypt was part of the BBC World Service Trust's support for state-run television in both countries, helping them to become true public service broadcasters. A team from BBC Arabic produced the programmes alongside local teams.
Our reputation in the region gave us these opportunities, in which the two state-run TV organisations offered their studios and their air time to a foreign broadcaster for the first time.
Egyptian TV is more than 50 years old and Saat Hisab co-produced with the BBC meant a first step towards giving the people the right to question their leaders.
Naglaa El-Emary is the BBC's Cairo Bureau chief and regional special projects editor for BBC Arabic. She has worked as a journalist in Paris, and has a PhD in media studies from the Sorbonne.
