Africa, Muslim Brotherhood | featured news

The chairman of the election commission announced that Mohamed Morsi had won 51 percent of the runoff vote completed last weekend, an ambiguous marker in Egypt’s promised transition to democracy.

The developments, reported on the Web site of the official newspaper Al Ahram, further escalated tensions over court rulings on Thursday that invalidated modern Egypt’s first democratically elected legislature. Coming on the eve of a presidential runoff, they thrust the nation’s troubled transition to democracy since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year into grave doubt.

Egypt’s election commission rejected fraud complaints and confirmed on Monday that a conservative Islamist from the Muslim Brotherhood and a secular former military officer will compete in next month’s presidential runoff.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s disbarred presidential candidate, Khairat el Shater, said Wednesday that Egypt’s military rulers have no intention of truly handing power over to civilian rule, but instead are trying to rig the election outcome in their favor.

Egyptian voters are awaiting results of the first stage of landmark parliamentary elections to be released Thursday, a day later than originally planned. The Freedom and Justice Party, a front for Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood, said the bloc was in the lead following largely peaceful voting on Monday and Tuesday. But the party faces new competition from the al-Nur Party, an ultra-conservative group whose members follow the strict Salafi brand of Islam, as well as from a host of smaller parties.

The editor of the website of the Muslim Brotherhood, the lead opposition group in Egypt, told the Associated Press that policemen stormed the group's Cairo office Friday.