RUTHFULLY YOURS

Title: Mohammed Morsi Muslim Brotherhood Candidate Wins Egyptian Presidency
Link: http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/42572

While the world media breathed a sigh of temporary relief about the results of Greek elections, yesterday with little impact on the crises in the Euro Zone, the EU and world trade, they have yet to focus on the Presidential victory by Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi. His election to Egypt’s Presidency follows the High Court ruling declaring illegal the Parliamentary elections over the period from November 2011 to January 20102 . The Muslim Brotherhood party took nearly half the seats in those parliamentary runoff elections. The Muslim Brotherhood Peace and Freedom Party has protested the court ruling. That supposed ‘soft coup’ by the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) didn’t boost the voter interest in their preferred candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last Prime Minister. Further Christian Copts, a significant minority in Egypt, have good reason to be concerned about a future Egyptian government led by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood with support from fundamentalist Salaist preachers and Qatar-backed tele preacher, the anti-Semitic Yusuf al Qaradawi. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri urged fundamentalist Egyptian Muslims to vote for Morsi. Moreover conservative Egyptian Muslim women came out in droves to cast a ballot for Morsi. Morsi’s election will also throw in doubt the 33 year old cold peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The SCAF might seek to maintain the treaty via veto power over whatever Constitution emerges from a new Parliament. President Obama has cozyed up to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa region as witnessed by attendance of key State Department Muslim Ummah outreach officials and National Security advisors at a recent Saban Center for Middle East Policy US World Islam Forum in Qatar in late May. CGiven this situation, domestic exhaustion and further tensions should be expected both within Egyptian civil society but also at a political institutional level. Indeed, following the SCAF statement questions remain over whether the armed forces will fall under the ultimate authority of the executive branch and/or whether they will actually obey presidential orders. Civil rights activists claim that SCAFs declaration rendered the scheduled handover of power to a democratically elected executive meaningless. From a regional context, the events of the last week in Egypt could be read as a proxy war between two Gulf Arab powers: Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The former backs the Muslim Brotherhood through funding, clerical consultations and massive media coordination, while latter has backed SCAF and its favoured candidate Shafiq.