"Egypt candidates file appeals, charge vote fraud; Could stoke more tension after vote" by Aya Batrawy | Associated Press, May 28, 2012
CAIRO - Overall, the presidential election was considered the country’s freest and most transparent in decades.
It was rife with fraud.
Judges were present at each polling station. International and local monitors, as well as journalists and the candidates’ representatives, were allowed to oversee the process in stark contrast to elections under Hosni Mubarak.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Egyptian Election Eliminations
On Saturday, President Carter said his center was restricted in its monitoring mission, but the process was generally acceptable.
Oh, they got the Carter seal of approval, huh? Yeah, now I believe.
The Carter Center said in its report that election authorities prohibited access to media, candidate agents and local and international observers to the final aggregation of national results, “undermining the overall transparency of the process.’’
The prestigious group also warned it would not monitor elections in Egypt again if the elections commission does not lift a 30-minute observation limit inside polling stations. This restriction, however, was not universally applied.
The Center said that the election overshadows other crises, including the fact that the powers of the incoming president are not yet defined.
We call them distractions over here.
The writing of a new constitution, which would determine the roles of the president and Parliament, was put on hold after liberals walked out of the Islamist-packed committee tasked with the drafting.
Then the military dissolved the thing anyway.
See: Egyptians Creating Constitution
Egypt to pick panel to draft constitution
Another loss.
--more--"
"Egyptian contenders soften tone heading to runoff vote" May 29, 2012
CAIRO - The Muslim Brotherhood is scrambling to broaden its appeal to liberals, leftists, and Christians....
To get the support it needs, the Brotherhood must tone down its religious rhetoric and offer far-reaching concessions, such as protecting the right to protest and strike, election-watchers said.
The Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi, will go head-to-head against Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander, in the June 16-17 runoff. They were the top vote-getters in last week’s first round of voting, according to full official results released Monday by the election commission.
Commission chief Farouq Sultan told a news conference that Morsi won 5.76 million votes, or 24.8 percent, during the first round of voting held May 23-24. Shafiq garnered 5.5 million, or 23.7 percent. Finishing a close third was leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi with 4.82 million votes, or 20.7 percent.
The real winner?
Hours after the results were announced, several hundred people ransacked Shafiq’s campaign headquarters in Cairo, smashing windows, tossing out campaign signs, and tearing up posters. They then set fire to the building. No one was hurt.
But he almost won.
Sultan said his commission received a total of seven appeals from losing candidates, and rejected all of them. Four of the appeals were dismissed because they had no legal basis, while the other three were not accepted because they were submitted after the deadline, he said. The commission’s decisions are final....
Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, the candidate who finished in fourth place, said Monday that he intended to turn his presidential campaign into a permanent party or movement.
The REAL WINNER?
“An Islamist who believes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States were an American conspiracy is the front-runner in Egypt’s presidential race, a new poll shows. Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, formerly a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, led the field of 13 candidates with 32 percent of the vote [and] has called the peace treaty with Israel a national-security threat, it is highly unlikely that Egypt’s foreign-policy will remain friendly to U.S. interests if he’s elected.”
And he finished fourth. How about that, huh?
Were the results upside down, readers? Do we have another rigged election?
Abolfotoh is a dissident former Brotherhood leader who campaigned as a liberal Islamist, challenging the Brotherhood’s authority to speak as the only voice of political Islam. Although it failed, Abolfotoh’s campaign generated the most passion, especially among young Egyptians....
AmeriKan media left something out, didn't they?
--more--"
Let's continue with the charade:
"Litigation and jockeying put Egypt’s political future at risk; Resolving issues crucial to plan for democratic state" by Hamza Hendawi and Maggie Michael | Associated Press, June 08, 2012
CAIRO - Egypt’s newly elected Parliament could be dissolved, the presidential election may have to be abandoned, and the country’s new constitution has yet to be drafted....
“Court decisions will raise a million questions,’’ said Sobhi Saleh,
a lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist group that
stands to lose the most if Parliament is dissolved and a Mubarak-era
prime minister is confirmed as the one going head-to-head against its
uninspiring candidate in a presidential runoff vote. “What we are seeing
now is political messiness.’’
However, a growing number of activists are embracing calls for canceling the entire election, despairing of the prospect of either the Brotherhood or a diehard of the old regime ruling the country. Mohamed ElBaradei, the nation’s top reform leader, is one of them....
Only two days before the election, the Supreme Constitutional Court will consider two cases that could potentially throw everything topsy-turvy once again.
In one, it is reviewing a lower court’s ruling that the law organizing parliamentary elections late last year was unconstitutional. If the court agrees, the current legislature - where the Brotherhood is the biggest party, with nearly half the seats - would be disbanded and Egyptians would have to go back to the polls to choose a new one.
The other case is whether Shafiq can stay in the race. The court is to rule on the validity of a “political exclusion’’ law passed by Parliament banning many former regime figures from running for office. If it backs the law, Shafiq would have to drop out and the presidential election might have to start again from scratch. Thousands of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square every day this week demand the law be enacted to exclude Shafiq.
Egypt’s transition to democratic rule has been tempestuous since army generals, led by Mubarak’s defense minister for 20 years, took over from the ousted leader in February last year. The country has taken one bad hit after another: deadly protests, a sliding economy, crime surge, and alleged rights abuses by the military.
Adding another layer to the uncertainties is Mubarak’s sharply deteriorating health after his sentencing last week to life in prison along with his former security chief.
Security officials at Torah Prison, where Mubarak, 84, is held, said the former president was suffering from high blood pressure, breathing problems, and depression....
Update: Egypt’s Mubarak on life support, official says
One sign of political progress came Thursday when the generals and 22 political parties, including the Brotherhood’s, agreed on how to select the 100-member panel to draw up a new constitution, resolving a three-month deadlock on the issue.
--more--"
"Egypt extends military police powers before vote" Associated Press, June 14, 2012
CAIRO - Egypt’s government extended the powers of military police and intelligence agents on Wednesday to allow them to arrest civilians for a wide range of offenses, just days before the runoff for a president who will replace the country’s military rulers as head of state.
Prominent human rights lawyer Gamal Eid and other rights activists said the decision was tantamount to declaring martial law. He said it offered concrete evidence of what was long suspected - that the military wants to extend its grip on power after handing executive authority to an elected president by the end of this month.
General Adel el-Morsi, the head of military judiciary, said the decision by the Justice Ministry - part of a government appointed by the ruling military council - provides “legal cover’’ for the presence of military forces in the streets, 16 months after they were deployed during last year’s uprising.
A different Morsi?
That statement suggests anxiety about new turmoil breaking out on Egypt’s already chaotic streets should Ahmed Shafiq, who was prime minister under ousted authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak, be elected in the runoff on Saturday and Sunday. Shafiq is facing Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that Mubarak’s regime repressed for many years.
Related:
"Mohammed Morsi, a US-trained engineer."
So either way the U.S. man wins?
The military has pledged to turn power over to the elected, civilian government once a new president is named. But even then, the military is intent on protecting its powerful position, including its widespread economic interests.
In a joint statement, 16 rights groups said the decision “doubles doubts’’ over the military’s pledge to transfer power to a civilian authority and reinforces suspicions that the “transfer of power will only be phony and won’t prevent the military from remaining a major player in political life.’’
Wait a moment and they will leave you with no doubt.
--more--"
"Egypt dissolves its Parliament; Top court’s ruling casts doubt on runoff election" by David D. Kirkpatrick | New york times, June 15, 2012
CAIRO - Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that the Islamist-led Parliament must be immediately dissolved, while also blessing the right of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister to run for president, escalating a battle for power between the remnants of the toppled order and rising Islamists.
The high court, packed with sympathizers of the ousted president, appeared to be engaged in a frontal legal assault on the Muslim Brotherhood, the once outlawed organization whose members swept to power in Parliament this spring and whose candidate was the front-runner for the presidency.
“Egypt just witnessed the smoothest military coup,’’ Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, wrote in a Twitter post. “We’d be outraged if we weren’t so exhausted.’’
The ruling threw into doubt the status of the presidential election runoff, originally set for Saturday and Sunday, and means that whoever is eventually elected will take power without the check of a sitting Parliament and could even exercise some influence over the election of a future Parliament.
Get set for Shafiq to be installed.
It also raises questions about the governing military council’s commitment to democracy and makes uncertain the future of a constitutional assembly recently formed by Parliament as well.
The decision, which dissolves the first freely elected Parliament in Egypt in decades, supercharges a building conflict between the court, which is increasingly presenting itself as a check on Islamists’ power, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The ruling, by the highest judicial authority in Egypt, cannot be appealed. It was not clear how the military council, which has been governing Egypt since Mubarak’s downfall in February 2011, would respond. But in anticipation that the court’s ruling could anger citizens, the military authorities reimposed martial law Wednesday.
In the weeks before the first round of presidential voting, Parliament had passed a law banning Ahmed Shafiq, who was Mubarak’s last prime minister, and other top officials of the Mubarak government from seeking the presidency. The law was previously set aside by a panel of Mubarak-appointed judges and Thursday was ruled unconstitutional by the high court.
At the same time, however, the ruling raised new questions about the presidential runoff itself. Some observers argued Thursday that the ruling may have had the effect of invalidating the candidacy of Shafiq’s opponent, Mohammed Morsi, whose nomination relied on the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence in Parliament.
The question at issue in the high court’s decision was the application of a rule setting aside two-thirds of the seats in Parliament for selection by a system of party lists, also known as proportional representation. The other third was reserved for individual candidates competing in winner-take-all races. Other authorities had decided before the parliamentary election that parties could run their members under their banners as candidates for the individual seats as well as the party list seats. But the court ruled Thursday that the parties should not have been allowed to compete for those seats, making the results invalid.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, as the largest and strongest, stands to lose the most from the ruling. Up to 100 of its 235 seats in the 508-member assembly were elected as individual candidates running under its banner. If it lost all of those seats, the Brotherhood would still control the largest bloc in the chamber, and together with the ultraconservative Salafi parties, Islamists would still command a majority. But the Brotherhood’s leadership would be much less decisive.
A senior Brotherhood official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said leaders of the Freedom and Justice Party were meeting to consider the party’s response. The official said all possible responses included refusing to immediately dissolve Parliament and rejecting the decision as legally baseless. He also said the party was considering withdrawing Morsi from the presidential runoff, to invalidate its legitimacy.
It was also unclear whether the ruling might force the dissolution of a recently formed 100-member panel picked by Parliament to write a new constitution. Many members were chosen because of their positions in Parliament. The panel was selected only days ago after talks between the Brotherhood and smaller liberal parties. With Parliament dissolved, administrative courts might strike down the panel, raising questions about how a new panel could be named.
--more--"
"Egypt’s generals abandon vow to cede power; Lock lawmakers out of Parliament ahead of election" by David D. Kirkpatrick | New York Times, June 16, 2012
CAIRO - The impending presidential vote appeared to divert energy from protests, and a march to Tahrir Square drew a relatively small crowd of a few hundred.
--more--"
"Egyptians choose first president since ouster of Mubarak" by David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim | New York Times June 17, 2012
CAIRO - Egyptians lined up Saturday to pick their first president since Hosni Mubarak even as a last-minute grab for power by the ruling generals called the whole exercise into doubt....
Voters faced a stark choice between two faces of the past: Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force general and Mubarak stalwart who promised to restore order and thwart the rise of an Islamist theocracy, or Mohamed Morsi, a veteran of the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood campaigning as a defender of the revolution against a return of the old order.
The ruling military council that took power after Mubarak’s ouster 16 months ago had pledged that this weekend’s two-day presidential runoff would be the final step in the transition to civilian government, the moment they would hand power to the first democratically elected leader in Egypt’s long history.
But the day before the vote, the generals shut down the democratically elected and Islamist-led Parliament, acting on a ruling rushed out by a court of Mubarak-appointed judges. They declared they would be the sole lawmakers, even after a new president is elected. And they began drawing up a new interim constitution that would define the power of the president whom voters were choosing Saturday....
The generals’ moves abruptly changed the stakes in the presidential race.
If Morsi wins, he will face a prolonged struggle for power against the generals, while Shafiq - who for at least a decade had been considered Mubarak’s likely successor - could emerge as a new military-backed strongman unrestrained by either a constitution or Parliament.
Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister, has made no public comment on the dissolution of Parliament. He cast his ballot Saturday in the style of his former boss, arriving at a polling place in an upscale suburb surrounded by a heavy guard of military and police officers. The lines were pushed aside and guards immediately closed the facility for his private use.
Keep that in mind, readers.
Crowds of his supporters were waiting both inside and outside the polling place. “The Brotherhood is dissolved,’’ they chanted, cheering at the dissolution of the Brotherhood-led Parliament. State media reported that a cameraman in a military vehicle filmed Shafiq’s trip to the ballot box, apparently to preserve it for posterity.
Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood has cast the election as the last chance to beat back the full return of the Mubarak autocracy. He waited in line in the nearly 100 degree heat Saturday to cast his vote in the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, where he used to teach engineering. “God is great,’’ a throng of supporters cried as he emerged, and he shouted over them to salute those killed demonstrating against Mubarak....
Quite a contrast, no?
Each candidate revved up a battle-tested political machine. Morsi turned to the Brotherhood’s system of local cells and charities built over 84 years of preaching and politics. Shafiq, who surged to roughly tie Morsi in the first round of voting, scarcely a month after he announced his campaign, relied instead on the network of local power brokers who had made up Mubarak’s defunct ruling party.
Oh, that first round is stinking to high heaven!
In Shafiq’s campaign offices in Menoufia, in the Delta province, operatives of the old ruling party said Saturday that they were enjoying the fun of Egypt’s first competitive presidential race. “This is a good feeling, if you don’t know what will happen,’’ said Tarek al-Warraqui, a campaign staffer who previously worked as a press officer for the local government. “Before, we know.’’
He mocked the Brotherhood’s missteps and bragged about his colleagues’ proficiency in the bare-knuckle politics of the district.
“We have a network,’’ he said. “We have someone in every village. The Brotherhood’s experience is different,’’ he said. “We worked in the light. They were underground.’’
He displayed fliers he had printed and distributed throughout the district calling the Brotherhood members liars, associating them with US officials, and, improbably, portraying them as disgraced members of the former government.
It was an extension of a campaign of bold inversions that Shafiq himself has leveled against the group.
That is a really creative term for lies.
In reality, many of the Brotherhood’s leaders endured jail sentences and some of its activists were tortured because of their opposition to Mubarak’s rule. During last year’s revolt, its cadres were a mainstay of the protests in Tahrir Square.
They joined late, but who cares?
But after entering the runoff against the Brotherhood’s candidate, Shafiq began accusing the group of complicity in the Mubarak government. He said that bearded Islamist gunmen tied to the Brotherhood were responsible for shooting demonstrators in Tahrir Square, and his supporters even filed murder charges against Brotherhood leaders to drive home the point.
In a television interview two nights ago, Shafiq, who sometimes says he still admires Mubarak, even claimed credit for Mubarak’s ouster.
“I’m the one who proposed the idea of stepping down, and I proposed it insistently,’’ he said. He had proposed it in a meeting with the top military leader, field marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and former vice president Omar Suleiman to plot a response to the uprising, he said, and it took “perseverance’’ to persuade Tantawi to carry it out.
(Blog editor shaking his head at the level of deceptive delusion)
Playing off the signs that the military-led government was determined to hold back their ascent to power, Brotherhood leaders held several news conferences to accuse Shafiq and his supporters of various schemes of electoral fraud.
But it was the cleanest election ever in Egy... sigh.
--more--"
"Muslim Brotherhood claims win in Egypt vote; Generals swiftly move to ensure their powers" by David D. Kirkpatrick | New York Times, June 18, 2012
CAIRO - The Muslim Brotherhood on Monday projected its candidate as the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential election, hours after the ruling military council issued an interim constitution granting itself broad power over the future government, all but eliminating the president’s authority in an apparent effort to guard against a victory by the Islamist candidate.
The military’s new charter is the latest in a series of swift steps the generals have taken to tighten their grasp on power just at the moment when they had promised to hand over to elected civilians the authority that they assumed after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year. Their charter gives them control of all laws and the national budget, immunity from oversight, and the power to veto a declaration of war.
After dissolving the Brotherhood-led Parliament elected four months ago and locking out its lawmakers, the generals also seized control of the process of writing a permanent constitution on Sunday night. State news media reported that the generals had picked a 100-member panel to draft it.
“The new constitutional declaration completed Egypt’s official transformation into a military dictatorship,’’ Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, wrote in an online commentary. Under the military’s charter, the president appeared to be reduced to a powerless figurehead.
Though final results are not available yet, by early Monday morning the Brotherhood was projecting its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, the winner, and its leaders escalated their defiance. After meeting with General Sami Hafez Enan of the military council, the Brotherhood-affiliated speaker of Parliament, Saad el-Katatni, declared the military had no authority to dissolve Parliament or write a constitution.
He said that a separate 100-member panel picked by the Parliament would begin meeting within hours to write up its own constitution - raising the prospect of competing assemblies. And Saad El Hussainy, leader of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc, said the group’s lawmakers would show up at Parliament as scheduled Tuesday morning. The generals have stationed military and riot police to keep the lawmakers out, potentially setting the stage for new clashes in the streets.
The military’s moves were “a new episode of a complete military coup against the revolution and the popular will,’’ Mohamed El Beltagy, a leading Brotherhood lawmaker, said in a statement online.
The generals have not spoken publicly or explained their actions, which have been announced without fanfare in the official news media. A rushed decision issued Thursday by a Mubarak-appointed court had initially provided at least a legal veneer for the dissolution of Parliament, but the swift consolidation of power has taken the feel of a counterrevolution in the making.
The presidential runoff had already become a critical battle in a long war between the generals and the Brotherhood, which for six decades constituted the primary opposition. Morsi, an American-trained engineer who once led the Brotherhood’s small bloc in the Mubarak-dominated Parliament, is up against Ahmed Shafik, a former air force general and Mubarak’s last prime minister. Shafik is campaigning as a new strongman who can restore order and prevent an Islamist takeover.
The military’s shutdown of Parliament has turned the race into something close to a life-or-death struggle for the Brotherhood. It demoralized Egypt’s Islamists and democrats alike, and at the same time energized Shafik’s supporters. The sudden possibility that the revolt that defined the Arab Spring could end in a restoration of military-backed autocracy has once again captivated the region.
The Brotherhood began predicting a win for their candidate as soon as the polls closed. “Morsi is way ahead,’’ Murad Mohamed Ali, a Brotherhood spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “The results were surprising even to us.’’ Six hours later, the Brotherhood said Morsi was leading by more than 1 million votes with 97 percent of the votes counted. State media and independent analysts put him ahead as well, but official results were not yet known.
Ahmed Sarhan, a spokesman for Shafik, also insisted his candidate was winning. “Mission accomplished,’’ he wrote in a message online.
A few moments later, Sarhan issued a written statement accusing the Brotherhood of a host of campaign law violations, including tearing down Shafik posters, bribing and intimidating voters, and “ballot rigging and stuffing.’’
The Shafik campaign did not present evidence for the allegations, but its statement added: “The Muslim Brotherhood’s systematic election violations prove how the MB does not believe in freedom of choice and democracy unless this democracy brings them to power.’’
What a pos.
The printed paragraph that didn't make the rewrite:
Egyptians turned out in lower-than-expected numbers, despite the chance to choose their first president since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Analysts took it as a sign of fatigue and rock-bottom morale.
And an acknowledgment that the poll meant nothing.
--more--"
"Egypt rulers promise power transfer by end of June" by Hamza Hendawi | Associated Press June 18, 2012
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s ruling military council pledged Monday to honor its promise to hand over power to the newly elected president by the end of this month, hours after Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi claimed victory in the first free presidential vote since the ouster of authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak 16 months ago.
Maj-Gen. Mohammed al-Assar, a senior member of the ruling council, said the generals would transfer power in a ‘‘grand ceremony.’’ He did not give an exact date or mention Morsi by name.
He said the new president will have the authority to appoint and dismiss the government and that the military council has no intention of taking away any of the president’s authorities....
Even this cynical, jaded blogger is astonished by the brazen lying.
Though official results have not yet been announced, the Brotherhood released a tally that showed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood took nearly 52 percent of the vote to defeat Mubarak’s last Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq with about 48 percent in a very close race. The count was based on results announced by election officials at individual polling centers, where each campaign has representatives who compile and release the numbers before the formal announcement.
The Shafiq campaign rejected Morsi’s claim of victory and accused him to trying to ‘‘usurp’’ the presidency or lay the groundwork to challenge the official result if it shows Shafiq winning.
‘‘What the other candidate has done threatens Egypt’s future and stability,’’ said the statement, adding that initial indications show that Shafiq is undoubtedly ahead with between 51.5 to 52 percent.
If Morsi’s victory is confirmed in the official result expected on Thursday, it would be the first victory of an Islamist as head of state in the stunning wave of pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East the past year. But the military’s last minute power grab sharpens the possibility of confrontation and more of the turmoil that has beset Egypt since Mubarak’s overthrow.
By midday, several hundred flag-waving supporters had gathered at Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the uprising, to celebrate.
In a victory speech at his headquarters in the middle of the night, Morsi, 60, clearly sought to assuage the fears of many Egyptians that the Brotherhood will try to impose stricter provisions of Islamic law. He said he seeks ‘‘stability, love and brotherhood for the Egyptian civil, national, democratic, constitutional and modern state’’ and made no mention of Islamic law.
‘‘Thank God, who successfully led us to this blessed revolution. Thank God, who guided the people of Egypt to this correct path, the road of freedom, democracy,’’ the bearded, U.S.-educated engineer declared....
WTF is he talking about?
--more--"
"Egyptian generals seek to ease fears over moves; Washington will review aid deals, US official says" by Ernesto LondoƱo and Leila Fadel | Washington Post June 19, 2012
CAIRO - Egypt’s military leaders sought on Monday to play down the significance of their move to sharply curtail the powers of the president, as US officials said they were “deeply concerned’’ about the apparent power grab.
The generals’ attempted reassurances came amid growing indications that the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamed Morsi, had won the country’s landmark presidential election, a victory that would make the large Islamist group the military’s chief challenger for power. But Ahmed Shafik, who served as the last prime minister under Hosni Mubarak, made a competing claim to have won.
Members of the presidential election commission urged Egyptians to wait for official results, which are expected Thursday.
In their two-hour news conference, the ruling generals did not mention election results, and they did little to undercut the main message of the decree they had issued Sunday, just minutes after polls closed.
The declaration left the armed forces virtually unaccountable to civilian rule and handed them legislative authority. It also gave the generals veto power over a body tasked with writing a new constitution and total control over the military’s budget and the use of force....
Victoria Nuland, State Department spokeswoman, said the Obama administration would review all aspects of Egypt’s relationship with the United States, including billions in military and economic assistance, if the generals do not move quickly toward seating a president with full powers and allowing for the election of a new Parliament.
“Decisions that are taken in this crucial period are naturally going to have an impact on the nature of our engagement with the government’’ and with the military leadership, Nuland said.
But the spokeswoman and others acknowledged uncertainty and confusion about the prevailing state of affairs and seemingly contradictory military statements. “The concern is that the situation is extremely murky now; even many Egyptians don’t understand it,’’ Nuland said.
Translation: She is shoveling shit.
Although the United States has long been Egypt’s primary benefactor, specialists on the region said that is among the least of the military’s concerns at the moment.
“They are fighting for what they see as their political survival . . . to prevent a different type of elite coming to power,’’ said Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East program. “What can the United States do to Egypt that essentially will make it worse for the military than having the Muslim Brotherhood in power?’’
********************************
Some Islamists, liberals, and others have challenged the military’s authority to dissolve Parliament, and some Islamist legislators and independent lawmakers have vowed to convene as scheduled Tuesday. Legislators have been barred from entering the building, creating a potential for clashes.
That's the PEOPLE right there, readers.
The Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement Monday calling the military’s declaration a coup and urging the group’s followers to participate in protests against the dissolution of Parliament and Sunday’s decree....
Some analysts said that, in exerting their authority, the generals might be gambling that Egyptians have been exhausted by 16 months of a tumultuous transition and will be unwilling to protest against them.
“This is about them approaching the end of the transition and worrying about their privileges and their power,’’ said Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University. “The fact that it is Islamists coming to power makes it easier to sell to the Egyptian public and to the West.’’
Robert Springborg, a specialist on the Egyptian military at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, said no one should have expected the generals to be subservient to strong elected civilian rule. “The end goal has always been the same,’’ he said.
Despite the Brotherhood’s defiant tone toward the constitutional decree, Morsi was upbeat when he held an early-morning news conference declaring victory.
If Morsi’s win is confirmed in the official result expected on Thursday, it would be the first victory of an Islamist as head of state in the wave of prodemocracy uprisings that swept the Mideast over the past year.
Just after dawn, Morsi supporters trickled into Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate the conservative Islamist’s purported victory.
The Brotherhood’s predictions of election results have proven accurate in the past, and Morsi was ahead in the polls with 51.6 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results reported on the state-run al-Ahram website.
--more--"
I'm sorry, but I think he won by more:
Demonstrators gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in support of presidential candidate Mohamed Morsy (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/REUTERS)."
"Egypt’s Mubarak on life support, official says" by Hamza Hendawi and Sarah el Deeb | Associated Press, June 19, 2012
CAIRO (AP) — The campaign of Mubarak’s former prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, said Tuesday he has won Egypt’s presidential election, countering the Muslim Brotherhood’s claim of victory for its candidate, Mohammed Morsi.
The election commission is to announce the official final results on Thursday and no matter who it names as victor, his rival is likely to reject the result as a fraud. If Shafiq is declared winner in particular, it could spark an explosive backlash from the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful political group, is already escalating its challenge against the ruling military over the generals’ move this week to give themselves overwhelming authority over the next president. Some 50,000 protesters, mostly Islamists, massed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday evening chanting slogans in support of Morsi and denouncing the generals’ power grab....
Shafiq’s campaign spokesman, Ahmed Sarhan, told a televised news conference that Shafiq won 51.5 percent of the vote and that the claim of victory by Morsi was ‘‘false.’’
‘‘Gen. Ahmed Shafiq is the next president of Egypt,’’ said Sarhan. He said Shafiq won some 500,000 votes more than Morsi, of the fundamentalist Brotherhood.
The Shafiq campaign’s claim came just hours after Morsi’s campaign repeated their claims of victory, saying Morsi had won 52 percent of the vote compared to Shafiq’s 48.
The Brotherhood first announced Morsi’s victory early Monday, around six hours after polls closed. It said its claim was based on returns announced by election officials from each counting center around the country. Each campaign has representatives at every center, who compile the individual returns. The Brotherhood’s compilation during the first round of voting last month proved generally accurate and, when it announced its victory early on in that race, it raised no objections.
But this time, Shafiq’s campaign countered quickly, saying early Monday that its ongoing count showed their man ahead. Tuesday’s announcement was its first claim that it had won.
Shafiq, a former air force commander who was named prime minister during Mubarak’s last days, is seen by his opponents as likely to preserve the military-backed police state that his former boss headed for three decades....
Yeah, right, Egyptians voted for that.
The estimated 50,000 protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, birthplace of last year’s anti-Mubarak uprising, were mostly Brotherhood supporters and other Islamists joined by a small group of leftist and liberal activists....
Some protesters gathered outside parliament earlier Tuesday, and a number of lawmakers tried to enter the building but were turned away by security forces. Hundreds of black-clad policemen armed with clubs and shields ringed the building, standing behind metal barricades....
On Tuesday former U.S. President Jimmy Carter expressed his concerns. His Carter Center monitored the weekend runoff as it has every nationwide vote in Egypt since Mubarak’s ouster in a popular uprising engineered by pro-democracy youth groups.
‘‘I am deeply troubled by the undemocratic turn that Egypt’s transition has taken,’’ Carter said in a statement Tuesday. He pointed to the dissolution of parliament and the elements of martial law and said the constitutional declaration ‘‘violated the military’s commitment to make a full transfer of power to an elected civilian government.
‘‘An unelected military body should not interfere in the constitution drafting process,’’ said Carter, alluding to the military’s control over the writing of the charter. Carter is a regular visitor of Egypt, where he often meets with the ruling generals and government leaders.
Amnesty International said the powers acquired by the military could lead to further human rights violations and, unless modified, they would allow the generals ‘‘to continue to trample on human rights with impunity.’’
**************************
Hoda Mahmoud, a 32-year old human resources manager, was out protesting at Tahrir Square on Tuesday. A member of a youth group known as the Revolutionary Socialists, she said her real fight is with the military and predicted that the Brotherhood may eventually back down.
‘‘The fight is in the street, not one about political settlements,’’ she said, alluding to the Brotherhood’s reputation for political opportunism and appetite for back-room deals.
--more--"
"Islamic Psyop .... Israel Worries About Egypt – We Told You So!
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 – by Staff Report
"Egypt’s Mubarak on life support, official says" by Hamza Hendawi and Sarah el Deeb | Associated Press, June 19, 2012
CAIRO (AP) — The campaign of Mubarak’s former prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, said Tuesday he has won Egypt’s presidential election, countering the Muslim Brotherhood’s claim of victory for its candidate, Mohammed Morsi.
The election commission is to announce the official final results on Thursday and no matter who it names as victor, his rival is likely to reject the result as a fraud. If Shafiq is declared winner in particular, it could spark an explosive backlash from the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful political group, is already escalating its challenge against the ruling military over the generals’ move this week to give themselves overwhelming authority over the next president. Some 50,000 protesters, mostly Islamists, massed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday evening chanting slogans in support of Morsi and denouncing the generals’ power grab....
Shafiq’s campaign spokesman, Ahmed Sarhan, told a televised news conference that Shafiq won 51.5 percent of the vote and that the claim of victory by Morsi was ‘‘false.’’
‘‘Gen. Ahmed Shafiq is the next president of Egypt,’’ said Sarhan. He said Shafiq won some 500,000 votes more than Morsi, of the fundamentalist Brotherhood.
The Shafiq campaign’s claim came just hours after Morsi’s campaign repeated their claims of victory, saying Morsi had won 52 percent of the vote compared to Shafiq’s 48.
The Brotherhood first announced Morsi’s victory early Monday, around six hours after polls closed. It said its claim was based on returns announced by election officials from each counting center around the country. Each campaign has representatives at every center, who compile the individual returns. The Brotherhood’s compilation during the first round of voting last month proved generally accurate and, when it announced its victory early on in that race, it raised no objections.
But this time, Shafiq’s campaign countered quickly, saying early Monday that its ongoing count showed their man ahead. Tuesday’s announcement was its first claim that it had won.
Shafiq, a former air force commander who was named prime minister during Mubarak’s last days, is seen by his opponents as likely to preserve the military-backed police state that his former boss headed for three decades....
Yeah, right, Egyptians voted for that.
The estimated 50,000 protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, birthplace of last year’s anti-Mubarak uprising, were mostly Brotherhood supporters and other Islamists joined by a small group of leftist and liberal activists....
Some protesters gathered outside parliament earlier Tuesday, and a number of lawmakers tried to enter the building but were turned away by security forces. Hundreds of black-clad policemen armed with clubs and shields ringed the building, standing behind metal barricades....
On Tuesday former U.S. President Jimmy Carter expressed his concerns. His Carter Center monitored the weekend runoff as it has every nationwide vote in Egypt since Mubarak’s ouster in a popular uprising engineered by pro-democracy youth groups.
‘‘I am deeply troubled by the undemocratic turn that Egypt’s transition has taken,’’ Carter said in a statement Tuesday. He pointed to the dissolution of parliament and the elements of martial law and said the constitutional declaration ‘‘violated the military’s commitment to make a full transfer of power to an elected civilian government.
‘‘An unelected military body should not interfere in the constitution drafting process,’’ said Carter, alluding to the military’s control over the writing of the charter. Carter is a regular visitor of Egypt, where he often meets with the ruling generals and government leaders.
Amnesty International said the powers acquired by the military could lead to further human rights violations and, unless modified, they would allow the generals ‘‘to continue to trample on human rights with impunity.’’
**************************
Hoda Mahmoud, a 32-year old human resources manager, was out protesting at Tahrir Square on Tuesday. A member of a youth group known as the Revolutionary Socialists, she said her real fight is with the military and predicted that the Brotherhood may eventually back down.
‘‘The fight is in the street, not one about political settlements,’’ she said, alluding to the Brotherhood’s reputation for political opportunism and appetite for back-room deals.
--more--"
"Islamic Psyop .... Israel Worries About Egypt – We Told You So!
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 – by Staff Report
Dominant Social Theme: What a surprise.
Free-Market Analysis: It's all over the news: Egypt's Muslims continue to make progress toward controlling government from an electoral standpoint and Israel has started making noises of considerable concern.
Meanwhile in Tunisia, Prime Minister Hamadi JebaliJebali's moderate Islamist Ennahda party took power after last year's revolution. And Libya, of course, is in the grip of an Islamist rulership as well. Soon perhaps Syria, too.
What a farce. A set-up.
A deliberate ploy to create further tension between East and West, Christian and Muslim, secular and Islamic.
How proud must be the power elite orchestrating this nonsense.
And here's a question: How could we predict this very thing for perhaps 18 months now, since the phony Arab Spring touched Tunisia, while no one in the mainstream media breathed a word of it?
Even the alternative, leftist part blathers on about resource exploitation and corporatism. But we've been clear in dozens of articles. This was a power elite exercise.
The power elite that wants to run the world has reacted to the Internet by apparently speeding up its formal takeover. Via economic depression, authoritarian regulation and increasing wars, the elites are causing chaos ...
Why? To create some kind of "new world order."
Of course, things don't always go smoothly. The sticking point in Egypt is that the army is not cooperating with the elites' phony Arab Springs.
What was apparently supposed to bring Islamic governments to the fore in a kind of Muslim crescent arc is being resisted by Egypt's military establishment.
Now, you would think that the US would stay out of the way – or at least attempt to moderate without taking sides. But that's not the case. AP reports the following:
Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi declared victory Monday in Egypt's first free presidential election since Hosni Mubarak's ouster 16 months ago. But just as polls were closing, the ruling military council issued constitutional amendments that gave sweeping authority to maintain its grip on power and subordinate the nominal head of state.
After the last-minute power grab Sunday night, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) pledged Monday to honor its promise to hand over power to the newly elected president by the end of this month. But the constitutional amendments stripped the president of almost all significant powers. The military decreed that it will have legislative authority after a court dissolved parliament, it will control of the drafting a new constitution and will not allow civilian oversight of its significant economic interests or other affairs.
Morsi represents the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist group which has emerged as the most powerful political faction since the uprising. The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party rejected the constitutional declaration, saying it was no longer within the authority of the military council to issue such a decree with less than two weeks left for the transfer of power.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman George Little urged the ruling military to transfer full power to a democratically elected civilian government, as it pledged to do in the past.
"We are deeply concerned about the new amendments to the constitutional declaration, including the timing of their announcement as polls were closing for the presidential election," said Little.
Did you catch that? The US – and the West generally – has been building up the threat of Islam for decades. But after making it possible for Islamic governments to come to power throughout the Middle East via a manipulated Arab Spring, Washington is now trying to make sure the Muslim Brotherhood is not deprived of its rightful political place!
Over a year ago, the US Federal Government began investigating the Muslim Brotherhood as a domestic terrorist threat. An extensive article in World Net Daily (February of 2011) reported the following:
Staff investigators with the House and Senate intelligence committees say they are probing the domestic security threat posed by the radical Muslim Brotherhood and, specifically, whether Brotherhood operatives have penetrated the U.S. government.
The true nature, ambitions and global reach of the Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood suddenly have become the focus of debate in Washington, following unrest in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.
As the Muslim Brotherhood threatens to effectively replace Egypt's secular, pro-Western regime, the tentacles of its worldwide jihadist movement have reached deep into the Muslim community in America.
Shockingly, federal court documents reveal that virtually every major Muslim organization in America is a front group for the Brotherhood. They also show that its U.S. network has raised millions of dollars for Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.
No, no, no ... There is nothing shocking about the Muslim Brotherhood, actually ... as the Brotherhood has evidently and obviously been penetrated at the top by US Intel for decades.
As we've reported numerous times in the past, the Brotherhood is a Trojan horse that US Intel intends to utilize throughout the Middle East as the chosen vehicle to take advantage of the phony Arab Spring that US Intel has also been behind, along with other elite forces of Western destabilization.
The power elite has obviously created a controlled Islamic opposition in the Middle East. This is necessary to continue the phony war on terror, which is a disguised attack on the freedoms of Western middle classes.
The war still isn't believable. The solution has been apparently to build up Islamic regimes in the Middle East – to create a phony enemy, in other words. This has been done by setting up a phony youth movement – AYM – and actually utilizing phony "al Qaeda" troops to destabilize countries like Libya and Syria.
What's eye opening is that even though the alternative media has reported on this phenomenon at length, the elites continue on their way as if they have not been thoroughly exposed.
This shows the depth of elite cynicism and also the lack of alternative plans. The old men who control central banking and are behind the one-world conspiracy effectively have no Plan B. They just blunder ahead as they have for a century or more and trust their plans will come to fruition.
In the 20th century such an approach worked fairly well. In the 21st century, not nearly so much. What we call the Internet Reformation has exposed these machinations and made their inner workings clear. Tens of millions "get it."
This doesn't bode well for elite manipulations going forward. It's hard to create a secret world government when thousands of blogs report on your conspiratorial doings every day.
Conclusion: We've watched the powers-that-be build out this Islamic crescent arc and reported on it regularly. It is a deeply cynical and bloody exercise. Just search the Internet using the terms "the Daily Bell" and "Islamic Crescent" and see for yourself. We're certainly not the only ones writing about it ...
--MORE--"
