Muslim Brotherhood’s Mursi elected president of Egypt

Mohamed Mursi beats off military man Ahmed Shafiq to become Egypt’s first post-uprising president

By Sherif Tarek

From Ahram Online

The Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohamed Mursi, has been named the fifth president of Egypt after narrowly beating off competition from rival, Ahmed Shafiq, in the hotly-contested presidential elections’ runoffs.

The result was announced around 4pm at the Cairo headquarters of the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC).

Mursi, the head of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), launched his presidential campaign shortly after Brotherhood’s second-in-command Khairat El-Shater was rejected by the electoral commission in April. El-Shater was disqualified due to a prior criminal conviction under the Mubarak regime.

Mursi’s win in Egypt’s first-ever genuine multi-candidate presidential elections puts an end to a 60-year military monopoly of the position. His predecessors Mohamed Naguib, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, who ruled tthe country since the 1952 Free Officers’ Coup, all came from the army’s ranks.

The inauguration of Mursi, nonetheless, does not imply that the military institution will loosen its grip on power. Recent developments give the military junta extra authorities at the expense of the president’s.

Egypt’s 2012 presidential elections were the second in the country’s history. The first Egyptian presidential polls took place in 2005 and saw then president Hosni Mubarak secure a clear victory, which many observers chalked up to massive vote-rigging by the now defunct National Democratic Party (NDP).

Mubarak remained in power for 30 years until the military forced his resignation after 18 days of countrywide protests.