| Poll result delay angers Egyptians |
CAIRO Egypt was on edge on Thursday after the Muslim Brotherhood warned of “confrontation” between the people and the ruling generals unless its candidate is named to succeed toppled president Hosni Mubarak.
A delay in announcing official results from the presidential election runoff, which had been due on Thursday, heightened the Brotherhood’s fears of a “soft coup” by the military, which already disbanded the Islamist-led parliament and gave itself sweeping powers.
A senior Brotherhood official warned the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that it risked a “confrontation” with the people if Mubarak’s last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq was declared the winner over Islamists’ Mohamed Mursi even as Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that Egypt’s military rulers have cast doubt on their commitment to hand over to civilian rule by drastically increasing their own powers before a new president is named.
The Brotherhood will not fight back in the way that plunged Algeria into bloody civil war, Saad Al Katatni, speaker of parliament dissolved by the ruling military council last week, said.
Returning officers had handed stamped results to representatives of the rival candidates after completing their tallies, which Mursi’s campaign has made public. But only the electoral commission can declare the official result.
The commission said late on Wednesday that 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 runoff.
Shafiq’s campaign team, which insists their candidate won the runoff despite the Brotherhood’s claims of victory within hours of the close of polls, accuses Mursi’s camp of printing almost one million false ballots, the state-owned Al Ahram newspaper reported.
Mursi’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 Mursi is sworn in.
“This is a constitutional coup,” said Brotherhood member Abdel Rahman Al Saoudi, one of the protesters camped out in Tahrir on Thursday morning, adding he would not leave the square until Mursi’s inauguration. The protesters also demand the military repeal an updated interim constitution that allows it to assume parliament’s powers and gives it a say in drafting the country’s next constitution.
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.
The military has pledged to hand 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.
The London-based Human Rights Watch said a series of decrees by the ruling generals have also set the stage for serious human rights abuses, more than a year after a popular uprising ousted long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak.
“The generals’ relentless expansion of their authority to detain and try civilians now goes far beyond their powers under Hosni Mubarak,” said Human Rights Watch Middle East director Joe Stork in a statement. “These decrees are the latest indication yet that there won’t be a meaningful handover to civilian rule on June 30,” he said.
Agencies
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