The apparent winners of the first round of Egypt’s first free presidential election, one from the Muslim Brotherhood and one Hosni Mubarak’s last premier, were reaching out to the losing candidates on Saturday ahead of a June run-off.
Final votes were still being counted, but unofficial results suggested that the top two vote-getters out of 12 candidates were the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi and Ahmed Shafiq, a holdover from the regime of ousted president Mubarak.
On Friday night, the Brotherhood said it was seeking to create a coalition of forces to challenge Shafiq, reaching out to Mursi’s former rivals, including Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, who left the organisation to run for president.
The Brotherhood was reportedly seeking a meeting with rivals on Saturday afternoon, though it was not initially clear who might attend.
“We call on all sincere political and national forces to unite to protect the revolution and to achieve the pledges we took before our great nation,” the Brotherhood said. “The slogan now is: ‘the nation is in danger,’” Essam al-Erian, the deputy head of the Brotherhood’s political arm, told AFP.
Shafiq too said he would seek broad support from former rivals, calling on each of his competitors by name to join him. “I reach out to all the partners and I pledge that we would all work together for the good of Egypt,” he told a press conference on Saturday.
Addressing the youth that spearheaded the 2011 revolt, he said: “your revolution has been hijacked and I am committed to bringing (it) back,” in an apparent reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, which already controls parliament. “I pledge now, to all Egyptians, we shall start a new era. There is no going back.”
A Shafiq-Mursi run-off looks likely further polarise a nation that rose up against the authoritarian Mubarak 15 months ago but has since suffered endemic violence and a declining economy.
The contest presents a difficult choice for activists who led the revolt against Mubarak. For them, choosing Shafiq would be to admit the revolution had failed, but a vote for Mursi would threaten the very freedoms they fought for.
Prominent activist and blogger Omar Kamel wrote: “Do we deliver Egypt to a representative of the old regime, as though nothing had happened, no revolution had taken place, or do we satisfy the (Brotherhood)’s greed for power, and give them all but complete control of the country and risk the fate of the revolution to satisfy their ambitions?”
Islamists, ex-PM reach out to rivals after Egypt vote
