Landslide Win For Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood 21JAN12

THE Egyptian people have spoken, the democratic process has worked, all without the drama and confusion of the Iowa 2012 gop / tea-bagger caucus. Congrats Egypt!

by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

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Enlarge Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images Egyptian women show their ink-stained fingers after voting at a polling station earlier this month. According to the election results, less than 2 percent of parliamentarians will be female.

The final results for Egypt's parliamentary elections are in, and while there are no surprises, the Muslim Brotherhood exceeded expectations by capturing 47 percent of the vote.
The final election results were read out Saturday with little ceremony, but the final tally cemented what most people in Egypt already know — Islamists groups are the new political powerhouse in post-revolutionary Egypt.
Out of the almost 28 million people who voted in these elections, almost half cast their ballots for the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party — the FJP. That's a staggering victory for a group that was oppressed and marginalized under former leader Hosni Mubarak.
Coming in second with a quarter of the seats is Al Nour, the new party representing Salafis — hardline Islamists who believe in the segregation of sexes in public life.
Altogether, that means Islamists will control a whopping 70 percent of Egypt's parliament.
Coming in third is WAFD, a nationalist party founded in the aftermath of World War I. Many people discounted its electoral power, but it did relatively well, considering. New parties formed after Egypt's revolution fared badly; the Egyptian Bloc, representing a union of secular liberal groups, came in fourth.
Because no quota system was put in place, women will also have little representation in the lower house of parliament, something that has outraged Egypt's women activists. Less than 2 percent of parliamentarians will be female.
Whether Islamist groups will band together to push through a conservative agenda is still unclear. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis are rivals, but they've already reached an initial power-sharing agreement over who will become the new speaker of parliament.
As the new kings of the political scene, The FJP has promised to reach out to all the different parties.
The biggest confrontation, however, may not be between the parties but rather between the ruling military junta and the newly empowered groups in Egypt. It's not yet clear what authority the parliament will have, and there are indications the generals running this country won't cede control easily.
The new parliament is expected to convene on Monday.
Saturday's announcement of the election results comes nearly one full year since Egypt's revolution began. Those protests ultimately toppled Mubarak, and more country-wide protests are expected to mark the anniversary on Wednesday.

Egypt's opposition parties fracture as talks with government begin 5FEB11

MUBARAK has to leave Egypt for peace to return to Egypt, there is no other alternative, the revolution for freedom and democracy will succeed, it is up to Mubarak whether the final act will be bloody or peaceful. We all need to pray for peace....
By Griff Witte and Ernesto Londono
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 5, 2011; 2:38 PM


CAIRO - The united front among Egyptian opposition parties fractured Saturday as several of them began negotiating with Vice President Omar Suleiman, despite earlier promises that they would not agree to talks until President Hosni Mubarak stepped down.
Meanwhile, state television reported that the top leadership of the ruling National Democratic Party, including the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, and the party secretary general, Safwat el-Sharif, had resigned Saturday. Hossam Badrawy, a physician and reformist, was named the new secretary general and also given Gamal Mubarak's former post as policy chief.
The United States welcomed word of the development. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the administration is pleased with "any step that provides credibility" to the process of political change, the Associated Press reported.
State television also said the Egyptian stock exchange would remain closed at least through Monday.
Suleiman met Saturday with representatives from several opposition parties. But representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition party, said they had not participated in the talks. Nor did Mohamed ElBaradei, the democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who had earlier been chosen by opposition parties as their spokesman.
"Mubarak needs to go as a precondition of talks," ElBaradei said in an interview Saturday night. "If you really want change, you have to depart completely from this pseudo-democracy. And that's not happening. It's not only that Mubarak isn't leaving. It's that he and his vice president have been making only peanut concessions."
Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, secretary general of the liberal Wafd Party, said he and other party officials had presented Suleiman with their proposals for constitutional change. Nour said that Suleiman mostly listened but at one point told the Wafd officials that "we need to go ahead with this as soon as possible."
Nour said Suleiman ruled out Mubarak's resignation from the presidency. "Not only will he not resign, he will not cede or delegate his powers," Nour said.
That stance means it is unlikely other opposition parties will join the talks. Nour said that Wafd decided to enter into negotiations because it did not see an alternative that would not involve an army takeover.
"We need a transition of power within a constitutional framework," he said. "At this stage, we have two possible directions: either constitutional reforms or a coup d'etat by the army. I don't see another way out."
Separately, a council of about 30 Egyptian intellectuals and business leaders continued holding talks but had not heard back from the government on an earlier proposal for a way out of the crisis, according to Nabil El Arabi, a retired international judge who is a member of the group.
"We are at a standstill," El Arabi said.
Diaa al-Rashwan, another member of the group and a political science scholar, said many opposition factions were dispirited by the news that Mubarak had met with several cabinet members Saturday to discuss ways to prop up Egypt's faltering economy. That meeting, announced on state television, suggested that Mubarak had no plans to step down.
At the same time, Rashwan said the tentative discussions between the government and some opposition groups were of incidental importance compared with the strains that have surfaced in Mubarak's relations with his military chiefs.
"Inside the government, there are still very hard negotiations going on between the president and the Egyptian army," said Rashwan, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "The army cannot stand for long this pressure that has been building on the streets, this loss of life and lack of security."
Meanwhile, the crowd of anti-government demonstrators, while smaller than Friday's, remained in place in Cairo's Tahrir Square despite a light afternoon drizzle and tight security on the roads leading to the square. Protesters have vowed to stay put until the president steps down.
Still reeling from clashes with pro-Mubarak squads, the demonstrators continued building makeshift barricades to hold their ground in the square. They were working cooperatively with the army to keep Tahrir orderly.
Demonstrators denounced the prospect of a negotiated transition of power, saying opposition leaders should not hold formal talks with the government until Mubarak resigns.
"No negotiations before he leaves," they chanted, referring to Mubarak.
Mubarak appointed Suleiman, his intelligence chief, as vice president shortly after the demonstrations began. On Saturday afternoon, the protesters in the square were flanked by a large banner that read: "No Mubarak, no Suleiman. Both are American Agents."
"We will not accept negotiations with anyone from the current regime," said Waleed Abed El-Rauf, 30. "We will not negotiate with the vice president. We will not negotiate until Mubarak leaves and our demands are fulfilled."
Also Saturday, Egyptian state television aired footage of a Friday sermon by Iran's spiritual and political leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging the Egyptian military to break ties with Mubarak.
"The Egyptian army is part of the people that will follow the masses," Khamenei said.
On Saturday, a senior Iranian leader weighed in, making a similar appeal to his counterparts in Egypt. Iranian army Lt. Cmdr. Gen. Seyed Abdolrahim Mousavi likened the protests in Egypt to Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Egypt's government is secular.
"We hope that the army of Egypt takes a careful and cautious look at this practical model and comes out of tyranny's darkness and joins the light of God," Mousavi said, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.
Egyptian officials have denounced foreign meddling in the crisis.
witteg@washpost.com londonoe@washpost.com
Staff writer Craig Whitlock and special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.