Brotherhood claims victory in Egypt president vote

The Muslim Brotherhood declared early Monday that its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, won Egypt's presidential election, even as the military handed themselves the lion's share of power over the new president, enshrining their hold on the state and sharpening the possibility of confrontation with the Islamists.

With parliament dissolved and martial law effectively in force, the generals made themselves the country's lawmakers, gave themselves control over the budget and will determine who writes the permanent constitution that will define the country's future.

But as they claimed victory over Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq in the election, the Brotherhood challenged the military's power grab. The group warned that it did not recognize the dissolution of parliament or the military's interim constitution — or its right to oversee the drafting of a new one.

That pointed to a potential struggle over spheres of authority between Egypt's two strongest forces. The Brotherhood has campaigned on a platform of bringing Egypt closer to a form of Islamic rule, but the military's grip puts it in a position to block that. Instead any conflict would likely center on more basic questions of power.

At a pre-dawn press conference Monday declaring their win, officials from the fundamentalist group that was banned for decades and repeatedly subjected to crackdowns under Mubarak's rule were ebullient and smiling, as supporters chanted, "Down with military rule."

"Thank God who guided the people of Egypt to this right path, the path of freedom and democracy," Morsi told the crowd at his campaign headquarters in his first appearance since the victory claim. He promised to "to Egypt in all its factions, Muslims and Christians" to "be a president for all Egyptians ... a servant to them" and seek a "civil, democratic, constitutional and modern state."

Final official results are not expected until Thursday. The Brotherhood's declaration was based on results announced by election officials at individual counting centers, where each campaign has representatives who compile the numbers and make them public before the formal announcement. The Brotherhood's early, partial counts proved generally accurate in last month's first round vote.

The group said Morsi took 51.8 percent of the vote to Shafiq's 48.1 percent out of 24.6 million votes cast, with 98 percent of the more than 13,000 poll centers counted.

Morsi "is the first civilian, popularly elected Egyptian president," the group proclaimed on its website. There was no immediate comment from the Shafiq campaign.

The question now will be how a Brotherhood president will get along with the military generals who have ruled since Mubarak fell on Feb. 11, 2011 and who will still hold powers that can potentially paralyze Morsi. The Brotherhood has reached accommodations with the generals at times over the past 16 months, as it struck deals with Mubarak's regime itself — gaining it a reputation among critics as willing to sell out for a taste of authority.

But after a highly polarized presidential election and the miltary's arrogation of powers to itself, the Brotherhood presented itself as willing to get into a confrontation with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the body of top generals headed by Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's defense minister for 20 years.

Just before the election, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has ruled since Mubarak's fall, slapped de facto martial law on the country, giving military police and intelligence agents the right to arrest civilians for a host of suspected crimes, some as secondary as obstructing traffic. Then came Thursday's ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court dissolving parliament, followed by the interim constitution declaration just after polls closed Sunday following two days of voting.

According to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press, the generals would be the nation's legislators and control the budget. They also will name the 100-member panel tasked with drafting a new constitution, thus ensuring the new charter would guarantee them a say in key policies like defense and national security as well as shield their vast economic empire from civilian scrutiny.

The president will be able to appoint a Cabinet and approve or reject laws.

Under the document, new parliament elections will not be held until a new constitution is approved, meaning an election in December at the earliest. In the constitution-writing process, the military can object over any articles and the Supreme Constitutional Court — which is made up of Mubarak-era appointees — will have final say over any disputes.

Earlier Sunday, the Brotherhood's speaker of parliament Saad el-Katatni met with the deputy head of the military council, Chief of Staff Gen. Sami Anan and told him the group does not recognize the dissolution of parliament, according to a Brotherhood statement that pointedly referred to el-Katatni by his title.

El-Katatni insisted the military could not issue an interim constitution and that the constituent assembly formed last week would meet in the "coming hours" to go ahead with its work in writing the permanent charter.

Still, the Brotherhood has no power to force recognition of the parliament-created constituent assembly, which already seems discounted after parliament's dissolution and is likely to be formally disbanded by a pending court ruling. Lawmakers are literally locked out of parliament, which is ringed by troops.

The generals, mostly in their 60s and 70s, owe their ranks to the patronage of Mubarak. All along, activists from the pro-democracy youth groups that engineered the anti-Mubarak uprising questioned the generals' will to hand over power, arguing that after 60 years of direct or behind-the-scenes domination, the military was unlikely to voluntarily relinquish its perks.

The presidential race was a bitter one.

Shafiq, a former air force commander and an admirer and longtime friend of Mubarak, was seen by opponents as an extension of the old regime that millions sought to uproot when they staged a stunning uprising that toppled the man who ruled Egypt for three decades.

Morsi's opponents, in turn, feared that if he wins, the Brotherhood will take over the nation and turn it into an Islamic state, curbing freedoms and consigning minority Christians and women to second-class citizens.

Trying to rally the public in the last hours of voting, the Brotherhood presented a Morsi presidency as the last hope to prevent total control by the military council of Mubarak-era generals.

"We got rid of one devil and got 19," said Mohammed Kanouna, referring to Mubarak and the members of the military council as he voted for Morsi after night fell in Cairo's Dar el-Salam slum. "We have to let them know there is a will of the people above their will."

But the prospect that the generals will still hold most power even after their nominal handover of authority to civilians by July 1 has deepened the gloom, leaving some feeling the vote was essentially meaningless.

"Things have not changed at all. It is as if the revolution never happened," Ayat Maher, a 28-year-old mother of three, said as she waited for her husband to vote in Cairo's central Abdeen district. She said she voted for Morsi, but did not think there was much hope for him.

"The same people are running the country. The same oppression and the same sense of enslavement. They still hold the keys to everything."

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9:28 PM | 0 comments

Egypt transition in turmoil on eve of vote

CAIRO (Reuters) - Activists called for a protest on Friday and Islamists warned that the gains of the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak could be wiped out after Egypt's supreme court dissolved parliament and ruled to keep his last premier in this weekend's presidential race.

Egypt's already troubled transition was plunged into turmoil by Thursday's court rulings. Islamists, who dominate parliament and have gained most since the uprising that ousted Mubarak last year, called the court ruling a "coup".

The run-off election on Saturday and Sunday was billed as the culmination of a transition before the military generals who have ruled Egypt for 16 months since Mubarak's overthrow formally hand power to a new president.

The new leader will now be elected without a parliament, whose election has been one of the few substantive gains, and without a new constitution to outline the extent of his permanent powers, a process delayed by political bickering.

Officials campaigning in the race ends a midday on Friday.

The April 6 movement, which helped galvanised Egyptians against Mubarak, called for a protest march on Friday that would head to Cairo's Tahrir Square "against the soft military coup." It called for the protest to start at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT).

"We will save our revolution. We will save Egypt from military rule," the group said in a statement sent out early in the morning on Friday.

The main target of the group's opposition is presidential contender Ahmed Shafik, a former air force commander who was appointed prime minister in Mubarak's last days in office.

They fear he will seek to rebuild Mubarak's repressive state and reverse the gains of the revolt, although he denies this.

He is pitted in the race against Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose group secured the biggest bloc in parliament and with other Islamists forms a majority in the assembly.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States, long wary of Islamists and which provides $1.3 billion a year in military aid to Egypt, expected the military to fully transfer power to a democratically elected civilian government.

The Brotherhood said on Thursday that the court rulings indicated Egypt was heading into "very difficult days that might be more dangerous than the last days of Mubarak's rule".

"All the democratic gains of the revolution could be wiped out and overturned with the handing of power to one of the symbols of the previous era," it said.

WARNING AGAINST FORGERY
Morsy pledged to press ahead with his presidential bid regardless and warned against foul play of the type that was typical of elections in Mubarak's days.

"If there is any forgery, there will be a huge revolution against the criminals ... a huge revolution until we realise the complete goals of the January 25 revolution," he said, referring to start of the uprising against Mubarak on February 11, 2011.
Shafik told his jubilant supporters at a rally at a hotel on the outskirts of Cairo that the court rulings were "historic" and said the "era of political score settling has ended."

"The army and the people are on one hand," his backers chanted.

Outside the court, protesters chanted "Down, down with military rule" and threw stones at troops lined up around on the building on the banks of the Nile. A few hundred demonstrators also gathered in Tahrir, though nothing like the hundreds of thousands that packed the square during and after Mubarak fell.

"Shafik is from the old regime. We can't have him back. We need to give Morsy a chance. The court rulings were wrong," Salah Sayed Mahmoud, a 43-year-old carpenter who had joined those in the square on Thursday evening.

Shafik's backers include Egyptians who may have been happy to see the back of Mubarak but are tired of turmoil and see Shafik having the military experience to restore order. Morsy has the broad grass-roots network of his 84-year-old group.

Yet for many Egyptians, who voted for centrist candidates in the first round, the choice could not be worse. They worry about handing power back to a military man like Mubarak as much as about giving it to a conservative Islamist.

For them, the vote has reproduced the same battle lines that dominated Egypt's stale politics for years, pitting a man who like every president for six decades came from military ranks against their perennial antagonist, the Brotherhood.

"We are back to the political dynamic of secular versus Islamist, of a civil state versus an Islamist state," said Mona Makram Ebeid, a political scientist and member of a body that advises the military council, speaking before the rulings.

"That is what we as political forces are confronted with today, causing almost a gridlock," she said, referring to the months of wrangling between the army, Islamists, liberals and other parties seeking to carve a new course for the nation.

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2:26 AM | 0 comments

Mob attacks women at Egypt anti-sex assault rally

A mob of hundreds of men assaulted women holding a march demanding an end to sexual harassment Friday, with the attackers overwhelming the male guardians and groping and molesting several of the female marchers in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

From the ferocity of the assault, some of the victims said it appeared to have been an organized attempt to drive women out of demonstrations and trample on the pro-democracy protest movement.

The attack follows smaller scale assaults on women this week in Tahrir, the epicenter of the uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down last year. Thousands have been gathering in the square this week in protests over a variety of issues — mainly over worries that presidential elections this month will secure the continued rule by elements of Mubarak's regime backed by the ruling military.

Earlier in the week, an Associated Press reporter witnessed around 200 men assault a woman who eventually fainted before men trying to help could reach her.

Friday's march was called to demand an end to sexual assaults. Around 50 women participated, surrounded by a larger group of male supporters who joined to hands to form a protective ring around them. The protesters carried posters saying, "The people want to cut the hand of the sexual harasser," and chanted, "The Egyptian girl says it loudly, harassment is barbaric."
After the marchers entered a crowded corner of the square, a group of men waded into the women, heckling them and groping them. The male supporters tried to fend them off, and it turned into a melee involving a mob of hundreds.

The marchers tried to flee while the attackers chased them and male supporters tried to protect them. But the attackers persisted, cornering several women against a metal sidewalk railing, including an Associated Press reporter, shoving their hands down their clothes and trying to grab their bags. The male supporters fought back, swinging belts and fists and throwing water.
Eventually, the women were able to reach refuge in a nearby building with the mob still outside until they finally got out to safety.

"After what I saw and heard today. I am furious at so many things. Why beat a girl and strip her off? Why?" wrote Sally Zohney, one of the organizers of the event on Twitter.

The persistence of the attack raised the belief of many that it was intentional, though who orchestrated it was unclear.

Mariam Abdel-Shahid, a 25 year-old cinema student who took part in the march, said "sexual harassment will only take us backward."

"This is pressure on the woman to return home," she said.

Ahmed Mansour, a 22 year-old male medical student who took part in the march, said there are "people here trying to abuse the large number of women protesters who feel safe and secure. Some people think it is targeted to make women hate coming here."

"I am here to take a position and to object to this obscene act in society," he said.

Assaults on women Tahrir have been a demoralizing turn for Egypt's protest movement.
During the 18-day uprising against Mubarak last year, women say they briefly experienced a "new Egypt," with none of the harassment that is common in Cairo's streets taking place in Tahrir. Women participated in the anti-Mubarak uprising as leading activists, protesters, medics and even fighters to ward off attacks by security agents or affiliated thugs. They have continued the role during the frequent protests over the past 15 months against the military, which took power after Mubarak's fall on Feb. 11, 2011.

But women have also been targeted, both by mobs and by military and security forces in crackdowns, a practice commonly used by Mubarak security against protesters. Lara Logan, a U.S. correspondent for CBS television, was sexually assaulted by a frenzied mob in Tahrir on the day Mubarak stepped down, when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians came to the square to celebrate.

In a defining image of the post-Mubarak state violence against women, troops dispersing a December protest in Tahrir were captured on video stripping a woman's top off down to her blue bra and stomping with their boots on her chest, as other troops pulled her by the arms across the ground.

That incident prompted an unprecedented march by some 10,000 women through central Cairo in December demanding Egypt's ruling military step down in a show of outrage
In contrast, the small size of Friday's march could reflect the vulnerability and insecurity many feel in the square, which was packed with thousands of mostly young men by nightfall Friday. Twenty rights groups signed on to support the stand and hundreds more vowed to take part, according to the Facebook page where organizers publicized the event, but only around 50 women participated.

Sexual harassment of women, including against those who wear the Islamic headscarf or even cover their face, is common in the streets of Cairo. A 2008 report by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights says two-thirds of women in Egypt experienced sexual harassment on a daily basis. A string of mass assaults on women in 2006 during the Muslim feast following the holy month of Ramadan prompted police to increase the number of patrols to combat it but legislation providing punishment was never passed.

After Friday's attack, many were already calling for another, much larger stand in the square against such assaults.

Another participant in Friday's march, Ahmed Hawary, said a close female friend of his was attacked by a mob of men in Tahrir Square in January. She was rushed off in an ambulance, which was the only way to get her out, he said. After suffering from a nervous breakdown, she left Cairo altogether to work elsewhere in Egypt.

"Women activists are at the core of the revolution," Hawary said. "They are the courage of this movement. If you break them, you break the spirit of the revolution."

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6:24 PM | 0 comments