Egypt Junta Won’t Announce Election Results; Both Sides Claiming Victory and Fraud

Protests in Tahrir Square Condemn Junta

Egypt’s weekend presidential vote, which ended with both sides declaring victory, is going to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future, as the nation’s junta has announced that the planned release of results on Thursday morning has been cancelled, with no new date set.

The junta had already made the results all but moot, since they issued an edict the moment the polls closed granting themselves exclusive legislative power, while the president is left as little more than a figurehead.

And even though both the Mubarak regime’s remnant’s candidate Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohammed Mursi have declared victory, both sides are also claiming broad electoral fraud on behalf of their opponent.

The official count, to the extent it took place, saw preliminary results released at the provincial level which, according to the Egyptian media, showed a narrow Mursi victory. Since then, the Shafiq campaign has claimed that they had data showing a victory of their own, but even more narrow than the semi-official account. Its unclear when, or even if, the actual count may be known.

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Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz

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John Ellis

A maddening crowd with wealth — A laboring-class with vision

The primary tool of slavery since the beginning of civilization, keep the people blind to the present and the future, making it impossible to organize in self-defense. Run through the woods in the dead of night and your liable to fall off a cliff.

Comes now the 25% rich ruling class to vote for the general, the 25% educated middle-class to vote for the billionaire and the 50% uneducated laboring-class to not be so fool as to waste time voting for their next set of dictators.
Checkers

Democracy, Chicago-style … if you don't like the election results, just don't announce them until you can create some results you like better.

Never forget that the Egyptian Army was the key of US control from Camp David forwards, when the Egyptian Army shifted from being a Soviet client to an American client. There was never any real doubt that by having the Egyptian Army take over that the US was keeping control of Egypt and crushing any hopes of real democracy …. that concept that the US military and government hates so thoroughly both at home and abroad.
Nathan

It is pathetic how the military junta treats the Egyptian people like they’re nothing but sheep and does whatever it wants after the so-called revolution. Cancelling the announcement as to who won such a big event as presidency without giving a reason and without coming out with a future date is reason enough for people to raise hell–but they are silent.

It is obvious that the junta is trying to gauge the people’s reaction to how far they (junta) can go, and if they decide that they can go far enough and nothing would happen, then they would pronounce Shafiq the winner.