.
The people’s revolutionaries do not feel represented by either candidate for the presidency. The groups behind the revolt at Tahir square were not organized to be a part of the political process. The Muslim Brotherhood had the advantage to be well organized and won the parliamentary electionand now the presidency. They represent approximately 30% of the Egyptian people and would have gained the power to write the new constitution. The military had other ideas and dissolved parliament while stripping the presidency of some power. The US was involved to make certain all power fractions would keep the Peace Treaty with Israel. A voice of the revolutionaries was a blogger named Sandmonkey and his Twitter account.
LIVE! The hour Mursi became Egypt president
According to the final tally, Mursi won 13,280,131 votes against 12,347,380 (a bit over 48 per cent) for Shafiq, according to the SPEC’s official vote count, announced after allegations of electoral fraud – filed by both candidates’ campaigns – were declared.
The total number of registered voters in Egypt stands at 50,958,794. Voter turnout in the presidential runoff was 26,420,763 (nearly 52 per cent). The total number of valid ballots cast was 25,575,511, while the number of voided ballots was 843,252.
Egyptian military moves to retain power, undermining presidential election claimed by Islamist
CAIRO (CBS/AP) – Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi claimed a hollow victory in Egypt’s presidential vote just hours after the country’s military rulers stripped the office of its most important powers. The power grab by the ruling generals delivered another major blow to hopes for a democratic transition born out of last year’s uprising that ousted authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.
The generals, who deny having effectively staged a coup and rendering the elected president a mere figurehead, will maintain authority over the crafting of laws and the drafting of a new constitution. Civilian oversight of their budget and other affairs will be strictly off-limits.
If Morsi’s victory is confirmed in the official result, it would be the first victory of an Islamist as head of state in the stunning wave of pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East the past year. But the military’s moves to retain power sharpen the possibility of confrontation and more of the turmoil that has beset Egypt since Mubarak’s overthrow.
“The military may partially exit from power after a new round of tough negotiations with the Islamist and the secular opposition on safeguarding its interests,” said Azzedine Layachi, a Middle East expert from St. John’s University in New York. “However, and no matter what, the military will continue to play a dominant role in Egyptian politics. The question for now is whether they will continue to do so directly for the coming years or indirectly behind the facade of a civilian rule.”
Mursi declared Egypt’s first civilian president, but military remains in control
More below the fold …
(Al-Ahram) – Egyptians were probably exposed to too much information, and too little truth, in the country’s first free-and-fair presidential elections.
The job [of electioneering] is even more difficult when the presidential run-off presents Egyptians with two candidates at opposite ends of the political spectrum: Mohammed Mursi and Ahmed Shafik. Mursi, though heading the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, was not the group’s first choice in the presidential elections, that honour having previously gone to Khairat Al-Shater. However, al-Shater was disqualified in April by the Presidential Elections Commission (PEC), along with Salafi candidate Hazem Abu Ismail, and former head of the intelligence services and vice-president Omar Suleiman.
Humour became a weapon in the campaigning as a result of Mursi being seen as a “spare tyre” for the preferred candidate, Al-Shater. While one of the perks of the 25 January Revolution has been the revival in the Egyptian sense of humour, the downside has been that this humour has seldom stopped, making it difficult at times to judge whether making jokes and hilarious illustrations are helping the candidate or drawing sympathy to his opponent, the target of the jokes in question.
Facebook and Twitter both played a role in launching “humour bombs” against each candidate. As Mursi was not one of the most popular faces in the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as being a spare tyre for the preferred candidate, many people did not take him seriously at first, under-estimating the influence the Brotherhood machine has when it decides to back a candidate in the elections.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
