Jun 20, 2012 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Excerpted from CNN: Egypt’s Presidential Election Commission has delayed, until a date to be announced, the release of the results of Egypt’s presidential election, state-run Nile TV reported Wednesday.
An announcement of the results had been expected on Thursday. Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak, and Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, were the two candidates in last weekend’s presidential runoff.
“The committee has not completed the verification of a total of 400 electoral violation reports submitted by the two presidential candidates,” said Tarek Shibl, a senior member of electoral committee. “Most probably the announcement of the election results will be delayed a day or two but nothing is final yet.”
Excerpted from The Guardian: The Muslim Brotherhood has vowed to face down Egypt’s ruling generals in a “life or death” struggle over the country’s political future, after declaring that its candidate had won the presidential election and would refuse to accept the junta’s last-ditch attempts to engineer a constitutional coup.
As final ballot results trickled in and unofficial tallies suggested that Mohamed Morsi had secured approximately 52% of the popular vote, the Brotherhood deployed its harshest language yet against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), promising to bring millions of Egyptians back on to the streets if attempts to rebuild the old regime continued.
“Over the past 18 months we were very keen to avoid any clashes or confrontations with other components of Egypt’s political system because we felt that it would have negative consequences for the democratic system and for society as a whole,” said Fatema AbouZeid, a senior policy researcher for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party and a media co-ordinator for the Morsi campaign. “But now it’s very clear that Scaf and other institutions of the state are determined to stand in the way of what we’re trying to achieve, and we won’t accept this any more. Egypt will not go back to the old regime through any means, legal or illegal.
“If we find that Scaf stands firm against us as we try to fulfil the demands of the revolution, we will go back to the streets and escalate things peacefully to the highest possible stage,” she said. “Now we have a new factor in Egyptian politics, the Egyptian people themselves, who will not accept a return to the old regime in any form, not after so much Egyptian blood was shed to remove it.
“The revolution is facing a life or death moment and the Egyptian people have put their faith in Dr Morsi to represent them at this time.”
