Egypt vote: Brotherhood advances to second round

AP via My Way News ^ | May 25, 7:55 AM (ET) | Maggie Michael

[Olog-hai]

The candidate of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood won a spot in a run-off election, according to partial results Friday from Egypt's first genuinely competitive presidential election. A former prime minister an a leftist were in a tight race for second place and a chance to run against him to become the country's next leader.

The run-off will be held on June 16-17, pitting the two top contenders from the first round of voting held Wednesday and Thursday. The victor is to be announced June 21.

The landmark vote—the fruit of last year's uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak—turned into a heated battle between Islamist candidates and secular figures rooted in Mubarak's old regime. The most polarizing figures in the race were the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi and former air force commander and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a veteran of Mubarak's rule. …

Morsi was in the lead with 28 percent of the ballots so far, according to the independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, which was compiling reports from counting stations. That is likely enough to secure him a spot in the run-off.

But the race for second place was neck-and-neck between Shafiq and leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, who was a dark horse during months of campaigning but had a surprising surge in the days before voting began as Egyptians looked for an alternative to both Islamists and the former regime figures known as "feloul" or "remnants."

Sabahi is a leftist who claims the mantle of the nationalist, socialist ideology of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt's president from 1956 to 1970. …

[Olog-hai]

Funny how the AP now obliquely admits that Nasser was a Nazi, isn’t it?