Thangai VS Annan

On June 24, 2012, Egypt’s election commission announced that Muhammad Morsi Isa’ al-Ayyat  has won Egypt’s presidential runoff, as the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential election, handing the Islamists both a symbolic triumph and a potent weapon in their struggle for power against the country’s top generals. Morsi won by a narrow margin over Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak. The commission said Morsi took 51.7 percent of the vote versus 48.3 for Shafiq. He will be sworn in as the President on the 1^st July, 2012.

Muhammad Morsi Isa’ al-Ayyat (born 20 August 1951) is an Egyptian politician and the President-elect of Egypt Since April 30, 2012. He has been Chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), a political party that was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood after the 2011 Egyptian revolution. From 2000 to 2005, he was a Member of Parliament. He stood as the FJP’s candidate for the May–June 2012 presidential election.

Morsi was born in the Sharqia Governorate, in northern Egypt. He received a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in engineering from Cairo University in 1975 and 1978, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Southern California in 1982. He was an Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge from 1982 to 1985. In 1985, he returned to Egypt to teach at Zagazig University. Two of his five children were born in California and are U.S. citizens by birth.

He becomes Egypt’s fifth president and the first from outside the military. But his victory, 16 months after the military took over on the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, is an ambiguous milestone in Egypt’s promised transition to democracy.

Following a week of doubt, delays and fears of a coup after a public count showed Mr. Morsi winning, the generals showed a measure of respect for at least some core elements of electoral democracy by accepting the victory of a political opponent over their ally, the former air force general Ahmed Shafik. “Today, you are the source of power, as the whole world sees,” Mr. Morsi said, pointing into the television camera, during his victory speech.

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the chairman of the military council, congratulated Mr. Morsi. The official presidential guard, which once protected Mr. Mubarak, arrived at Mr. Morsi’s home to take up their new role. Until 16 months ago, their appearance at the home of a Brotherhood leader could only mean a trip to one of Mr. Mubarak’s jails. Mr. Morsi himself was jailed for a time in 2008 and again during the revolt last year against Mr. Mubarak.

Fulfilling a campaign promise, Mr. Morsi resigned on 24.06.2012 from the Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party. He is expected to appoint a prime minister and cabinet in the next few days. He has promised that the prime minister and an advisory council would come from outside the Brotherhood as part of a unity government based on a rebuilt alliance with liberals and other secular activists.

At the same time, however, Mr. Morsi has always campaigned not as an individual with a vision of his own but rather as an executor of the Brotherhood’s platform. He was the group’s second-choice nominee, put forward after the disqualification of its leading strategist and most influential leader, Khairat el-Shater. Mr. Morsi, a close friend and protégé of Mr. Shater’s, has vowed to carry out the “renaissance” program that Mr. Shater devised to overhaul Egypt’s ministries. The two did little to dispel the assertions of critics that Mr. Shater and the Brotherhood’s board would wield the true power in a Morsi government.

President Obama called Mr. Morsi to congratulate him and offer support, the White House said in a statement. A separate statement urged the generals to speed the transition to democracy and recalled Mr. Morsi’s pledges of inclusiveness: “We believe in the importance of the new Egyptian government upholding universal values, and respecting the rights of all Egyptian citizens — including women and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians.”

And incongruously, given Washington’s history of antagonism toward the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the secular lawmakers argued that the United States had improperly tried to sway the presidential race in Mr. Morsi’s favor. American officials and diplomats say the United States supported only the democratic process, regardless of the election’s result.

Egypt

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