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| Africa North | |
| Egypt showdown after election result delayed | |
| 2012-06-22 | |
CAIRO: Egypt yesterday braced for a showdown between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood as the electoral commission delayed announcing the winner of a presidential poll claimed by the Islamists.
A senior Brotherhood official warned the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that it risked a “confrontation” with the people if Hosni Mubarak’s last premier Ahmed Shafiq was declared the winner over Mohamed Morsi. Another Brotherhood leader, Khairat El-Shater, said Islamist supporters would rally “peacefully” if Shafiq was declared the winner, because the Brotherhood had evidence that Morsi won, the group’s website reported. Returning officers had handed stamped results to representatives of the rival candidates after completing their tallies, which Morsi’s campaign has made public. But only the electoral commission can declare the official result. The commission said late on Wednesday it would delay its announcement while it studied allegations of fraud from both candidates that might affect the final outcome of the June 16-17 run-off. Shafiq’s campaign team, which insists he won despite the Brotherhood claims of victory within hours of polls closing, accuses the Morsi camp of printing almost a million false ballots, the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported. Morsi’s campaign, which has published the results from counts across the country, denies the allegation and accuses Shafiq’s team of bribing voters. The newspaper of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), ran a large red banner on its Thursday edition saying: “Sit-in,” above an announcement of an open-ended protest until Morsi is sworn in. The military has pledged to transfer power to the winner by the end of the month, but Brotherhood members who set up tents in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the hub of protests that overthrew Mubarak last year, say they are not convinced. They cite the military’s assumption of legislative powers after a court ordered parliament dissolved, and decrees giving the army powers of arrest and a broad say in government policy. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |