After a tense wait which continued for a week after the presidential runoff, Egypt’s electoral commission has confirmed Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammad Mursi as the winner of the two-horse race. In a speech lasting an hour, at the heavily fortified headquarters of the Higher Presidential Election Commission in Cairo on Sunday, Farouq Sultan said Mursi had claimed the poll with 51.73 percent of the vote ahead of Ahmed Shafiq who polled 48.27 percent.
Pro-Mursi crowds tens of thousands strong had gathered at Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the rallying point for last year’s revolution had cheered jubilantly as Sultan announced the results. The head of the commission also said it had upheld some 466 complaints by the candidates of election-related shortfalls but was quick to add that they did not affect the overall outcome or integrity of the results. Both candidates had claimed victory hours after the polls closed last weekend, setting a tense finale to the announcement of the poll which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) had postponed the date for announcing the results, drawing widespread criticisms.
Over 50 million Egyptians last Saturday and Sunday voted in the second round of the presidential election which pitted the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi and Ahmed Shafiq, President Hosni Mubarak’s last Prime Minister before the popular uprising in 2011. The first round of the election held on 23 and 24 May 2012 witnessed the participation of 13 candidates. The preliminary results of the election are expected on June 21, 2012