Today is another historic day for Egypt:
Muhammad Mursi, the candidate representing the Muslim Brotherhood, is now the predicted winner of the run-off presidential election, which took place in Egypt yesterday. His opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, the former prime minister under Mubarak, trails behind Mursi by only about 1 million votes (roughly 12.5 million vs. 11.5 million), with 96% of the votes counted already.
We are breathing a sigh of relief. Mursi's election indicates that (the majority of) the country is choosing to move forward and continue with the revolution. If the former prime minister had won, things would have gotten ugly, and progress would have been slow and perhaps backwards for a while. Regardless of whether we agree 100% with every view of the Muslim Brotherhood, they are the only group capable of carrying the revolution forward right now. They have the organization, the numbers, the resources, and the momentum. Thank goodness the outcome of this historic election was a step forward.
This is a major blow to Mubarak's remaining supporters, including his supporters in the court, who last week pulled a coup to nullify the recently elected parliament. In their power play, they tried to argue that the parliamentary elections held in November 2011 were illegitimate because they didn't give independent candidates fair representation on the ballots - even though it had been agreed prior to the election that two-thirds of the candidates would be running under a party and one-third would be running independently. The parliament astutely claimed that the decision to retain the current parliament body or not rests with the people, not the court or the military. The Brotherhood has also said that it would not recognize the court's attempted dissolution of the parliament.
We'll see how the court responds, but in the meantime, we can celebrate Egypt's First Democratically Elected President, and rest assured that the revolution continues...
Muhammad Mursi, the candidate representing the Muslim Brotherhood, is now the predicted winner of the run-off presidential election, which took place in Egypt yesterday. His opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, the former prime minister under Mubarak, trails behind Mursi by only about 1 million votes (roughly 12.5 million vs. 11.5 million), with 96% of the votes counted already.
We are breathing a sigh of relief. Mursi's election indicates that (the majority of) the country is choosing to move forward and continue with the revolution. If the former prime minister had won, things would have gotten ugly, and progress would have been slow and perhaps backwards for a while. Regardless of whether we agree 100% with every view of the Muslim Brotherhood, they are the only group capable of carrying the revolution forward right now. They have the organization, the numbers, the resources, and the momentum. Thank goodness the outcome of this historic election was a step forward.
This is a major blow to Mubarak's remaining supporters, including his supporters in the court, who last week pulled a coup to nullify the recently elected parliament. In their power play, they tried to argue that the parliamentary elections held in November 2011 were illegitimate because they didn't give independent candidates fair representation on the ballots - even though it had been agreed prior to the election that two-thirds of the candidates would be running under a party and one-third would be running independently. The parliament astutely claimed that the decision to retain the current parliament body or not rests with the people, not the court or the military. The Brotherhood has also said that it would not recognize the court's attempted dissolution of the parliament.
We'll see how the court responds, but in the meantime, we can celebrate Egypt's First Democratically Elected President, and rest assured that the revolution continues...
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