Islamic Brotherhood Claims Win in Egypt Presidential Race

With 100 percent of the votes counted, Islamic Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi has claimed victory in the Egyptian presidential election, winning 52 percent of the ballots, his campaign headquarters claimed on Monday morning.

The opposing candidate, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, gained 48 percent.

“These are confirmed results, all counted ballots from all voting stations are with written guarantees of the election commissions,” Mursi’s campaign headquarters said.

Mursi’s pre-election campaign website is already adorned with a banner proclaiming “Mohammed Mursi, first elected President of Egypt.”

If Mursi’s victory is confirmed, he will be the first president of Egypt representing an Islamic party, and also the first leader of modern Egypt without a military background.

In his pre-election manifesto, Mursi promised that in the event of his election as president, he would resign as the leader of the Freedom and Justice Party.

He also promised to give up Egypt’s tradition of one-man presidential rule, and said he would name deputies, assistants and advisers representing different sectors of Egyptian society.

Mursi won the first round of the election, in no small part due to the mass activism of the Islamic Brotherhood, the largest political movement in the country.

An engineer by profession, Mursi, 60, was educated in the United States. He was elected to parliament several times in the Mubarak era as an independent deputy.

Mursi was initially the back-up candidate for the Freedom and Justice Party.

He emerged as the main candidate after the previous leader, the deputy of the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme council, Khairat ash-Shatir, withdrew. <Cihan>

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