The Egyptian Moslem Brüderbund's Justice and Peace party won 40 percent of the vote in the first phase of Egypt's elections, according to Arab media reports of the results published on Saturday.| Arab media being, of course, known for their accuracy when raw facts are involved. See Note below. |
...Salafists espouse an austere form of Sunni Islam that seeks a return to practices that were common in the 7th century. Rather than doing that themselves and letting other people alone they insist everybody do as they say and they try to kill everybody who doesn't...
party al-Nour took the second-highest number of votes, al-Quds al-Arabi and al-Hayat reported. Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that liberal parties took 15% of the vote. The Jerusalem Post could not independently verify the reports.
Abdul Moez Ibrahim, Egypt's top election official announced the results of only a handful of clear-cut victories for individual candidates, with most going to run-offs next week, and gave no figures for party lists in the polls, in which Islamist parties are expected to come out on top.
He said four individual candidates, two of them from the Moslem Brüderbund's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), won more than 50 percent of votes to gain outright victory out of 56 seats contested. The rest will require a run-off.
| Note: In other words, the fog of elections still hovers over the Egyptian political landscape. We'll perhaps have a better idea in a month or two who has been counted as winning. |