The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammad Mursi has won Egypt's presidential election with 51.73% of the vote. His opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, got 48.27%, according to the election commission: 13.230 million to 12.347 million votes. That's a 51.6% turnout of the 50.3 million eligible voters. 843,000 votes were declared invalid (partly from a protest campaign) and 37,000 votes were cancelled, following 466 appeals to the electoral commission by both parties.
Mohamed Mursi belongs to the "Freedom and Justice Party" (FJP), which is affiliated with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. (Mursi replaced Khairat al-Shater for the FJP when the latter was disqualified.) In the revolution against Mubarak and the year following, the FJP had repeatedly denied it would field a Presidential candidate. This changed only three months ago, on March 31, but its first candidate was disqualified on the technicality that he had been convicted under Mubarak and his pardon was by the military council and not by the criminal court. Mursi was nominated in his place. Mursi formally resigned from the MB and FJP shortly after being elected.
Ahmed Shafiq was Mubarak's senior commander of the Air Force and Mubarak appointed him as Prime Minister for 33 days from January 31 to March 3, 2011. In effect, he represents the Mubarak regime and the military's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
The Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC), consisting of judges appointed by Mubarak, oversaw the election.
Prior to the first presidential round of voting May 23-24, 2012, SPEC disqualified several leading candidates. Mursi won a plurality of 24.8%, Shafiq won 23.7%, and Sabahi (a Nasserite) won 20.7%, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh (an Islamist) won 17.5%, Amr Mousa (Arab League) won 11.13%, with the remaining 2% divided by eight minor candidates. Turnout was a low 43.4%.
BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/ (it will dominate their front page for the next 2+ days)
[The transliteration of Mursi's name in English can vary: Mursi, Mursy, Morsi, Morsy. In Arabic it is مرسى . BCC chooses Mursi, which to my ear is closer phonetically: 'mour' + the "i" is shortened, not a long "ee" sound.]
This is a remarkable outcome, following a remarkable process. Egypt has been a dynasty, caliphate, colony, monarchy, military authoritarian regime, and now for the first time a (very-fragile) democracy headed by a civilian, after decades of rule by a military junta and dictator.
Brief history:
* King Farouk was overthrown by a military coup and revolution in 1952.
* The first Prime Minister and President was Muhammad Naguib, who lasted only 18 months before Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser (who'd organized the coup) accused him of supporting the recently-outlawed Moslem Brotherhood and pushed him aside.
* Nasser ruled for 14 years, 1956-1970 (including during Israel's surprise attack in the 1967 Six Day War); he died of a heart attack.
* Vice President Anwar Sadat replaced him, 1970-1981, and surprised observers by purging Nasserites and encouraging an Islamist movement. Sadat launched the failed October 1973 (Yom Kippur) surprise attack against Israeli forces occupying the Egyptian Sinai Penninsula and Syria's Golan Heights. He appointed Mubarak as Vice President in 1975. He later supported and signed the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, led by US President Jimmy Carter. His friend, the Shah of Iran, was granted exile in Egypt, died there, received a state funeral, and is interred at the Al-Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo.
* Sadat was assassinated October 1981 by members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (later led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, current head of Al Qaeda), with approval of Omar Abdel-Rahman, a cleric later convicted in the US for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
* Vice President Hosni Mubarak, who was lightly wounded, became President. Mubarak ruled for 30 years, from 1981-2011, when he was overthrown in the January-February 2011 revolution.
* Mohammed Mursi is an engineer, with a BS and MS from Cairo University in 1975 and 1978, and a PhD in engineering from the University of Southern California in 1982. He was an Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge from 1982 to 1985. In 1985, he returned to Egypt to teach. Two of his five children were born in California and are U.S. citizens. He has long been active in the Muslim Brotherhead and its FJP.
This is a hugely important election, for the entire Middle East (not just Egypt), given Egypt's size and cultural influence in the region.
However, things are very far from being settled. Just weeks ago, with support from sudden SPEC rulings, the military's SCAF declared the Parliamentary elections last year to be invalid, closed Parliament, declared the re-written Constitution and the assembly who wrote it to be invalid, and announced its own assembly to write a new Constitution. As the New York Times puts it:
With just two weeks to go until their promised exit from power by June 30, the generals instead shut down the democratically elected and Islamist-led Parliament; took over its powers to make laws and set budgets; decreed an interim constitution stripping the new president of most of his power; and re-imposed martial law by authorizing soldiers to arrest civilians. And the general[s] gave themselves an effective veto over provisions of a planned permanent constitution as well.Stay tuned, a lot is at stake.