WarSclerotic

Mohammed Morsi declared Egypt’s first democratic president | The Times of Israel.

(First and last… Iran is the model. – JW )

Muslim Brotherhood candidate takes 51.7 percent of votes to become country’s first leader in post-Mubarak era

Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi was declared the first democratically elected president of Egypt Sunday afternoon, ending months of speculation as to who would replace deposed leader Hosni Mubarak.

The carrying out of free elections in Egypt was a stunning development in a country that had been governed by autocracy until a popular revolution ousted Mubarak in January 2011.

Morsi, who won an earlier round of presidential voting, was declared the winner with 51.7 percent of the vote, compared to 48.3 percent for his opponent Ahmed Shafiq.

Officials said 843,250 votes were declared void.

Some 51% of Egypt’s voting-eligible public cast ballots in the runoff election.

The announcement by election official Farouk Sultan came after a 45-minute delay and a long prologue.

Tahrir Square erupted into loud cheers and mass celebrations as the winner was announced, with thousands of people waving flags, shouting and dancing.

“As Egyptians celebrate their freedom, we pay special tribute to the martyrs of the great Egyptian revolution, their blood didn’t go in vain,” the Brotherhood tweeted shortly after the announcement.

Morsi’s spokesman Ahmed Abdel-Attie said words cannot describe the “joy” in this “historic moment.”

“We got to this moment because of the blood of the martyrs of the revolution,” he said. “Egypt will start a new phase in its history.”

The announcement was the culmination of a tumultuous, 16-month transition that was supposed to bring democratic rule, but was tightly controlled and curtailed by the military rulers who took power from Mubarak.

Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, who headed the country’s caretaker military junta, congratulated Morsi after the win, according to Egyptian state television.

Throughout the campaign, the Islamist Brotherhood attempted to paint Shafiq, a former prime minister, as the continuation of Mubarak’s regime, which ruled Egypt for 30 years.

Results were originally scheduled to be released on Thursday, but were pushed back as officials said they needed more time to tally the votes.

Both Shafiq and Morsi had previously announced that they had won.

Israel has expressed worries over the future of ties with Egypt should the hard-line Brotherhood take power.

The announcement was preceded by heavy police presence in Cairo and other places to counter possible protests, adding to tension in the country. The crossing between Gaza and Egypt was ordered closed just before the announcement, according to Egyptian daily Al-Ahram.

The announcement of the president was supposed to be the end of Egypt’s post-uprising transition to democracy. However, the military made a series of last minute-moves that stripped the office of president of most of its major powers and kept those powers concentrated in the hands of the military. A court ruling a few days before that dissolved the freely elected parliament that was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the pro-democracy uprising, a swelling crowd of thousands gathered in sweltering midday heat awaiting the announcement. They were a mix of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis along with some of the revolutionary youth groups that drove last year’s uprising. A separate pro-Shafiq rally of some 2,000 protesters gathered in the northern Cairo district of Nasr City.

This entry was posted on June 24, 2012 at 6:07 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.