AFRICA/EGYPT - Presidentials: runoff between the candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood and the army

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - "The two realities better organized won: the Muslim Brotherhood, thanks to their social networks spread throughout Egypt, the military and the great bureaucracy state " say to Fides local sources in Cairo where yesterday, May 28, the Supreme Commission for the presidential elections in Egypt confirmed that the ballot of 16 and 17 June will see the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ahmed Shafiq and Mubarak’s former Premier (and former senior Air Force officer ) Ahmed Shafiq. In the first round of 23 and 24 May, Morsi received 5,764,952 votes, while Shafiq with 5,505,327. The turnout was 46.42% out of 51 million voters who had the right to vote.
Some of the defeated candidates in the first round have launched accusations of fraud.
"This figure reflects a certain weariness of the electorate after the parliamentary elections in past months. There is also a part of the population that does not seem interested in voting," say our sources.
Shafiq’s second place has sparked protests from the movement of Tahrir Square, where protesters have asked for the annulment of the election results because the existing election law prohibits members of the old regime as a candidate for the presidential. During the night the general headquarters of Shafig’s electoral campaign in Cairo was burned by demonstrators.
"Shafiq gathered the consensus of the mass of the old regime: the military and police officers with their families, entrepreneurs related to government contracts, the bureaucrats of the state apparatus, and so on, struggling to maintain their social positions. Shafiq is seen by those who voted for him as a qualified person able to secure the interests of entrenched economic and military power," the sources told Fides. "One must also remember that the army controls an important part of the Egyptian economy."
"The Muslim Brotherhood, which, at first, had announced not to present its own candidate for presidency, changed its position when they realized their electoral strength after arriving in the early parliamentary elections" continue the sources. "But they recorded several defections from their voters in the presidential election because they did not obtain a striking result that they had had in the parliamentary elections. This stems from the fact that in the parliamentary elections, there were candidates who had a network of patronage that was lacking in these elections," concludes our source. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 29/5/2012)