Egypt's Presidential Election: The Results.

The official verified and certified results of the first round of the Egyptian Presidential Election were published a day early on Monday May 28th 2012. They show that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsy came first with 5,764,952 votes (24.78%) while the Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's former Prime Minister came second with 5,505,327 votes (23.66%). With no single candidate securing more then 50% of the vote these two candidates will now go on to a run-off vote.

Unfortunately due to events in Syria I have only had the opportunity to check these results today (29/5/12). Therefore it will be tomorrow before I've had time to process all that information and produce a comprehensive round-up. In the meantime though I will say that it was a free and fair election. Only 406,720 (1.72%) ballots were excluded which is a small number by the standards of any election and was less then the difference between the second and third place candidate meaning that they would not have affected the result.

The Egyptian Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Monitors Without Borders found 146 alleged violations but these were mainly technical violations that would not have affected the election result. For example the ban on campaigning outside polling stations is mainly there to prevent members of opposing campaigns getting into fights outside polling stations making it unsafe for people to vote.

Monitors from the US NGO the Carter Centre's main complaint was that they weren't given as much access as they would like to the election process only receiving accreditation 7 days before the vote. The Carter Centre's patron is former US President Jimmy Carter. You may remember that there has been long running tension between Egypt and the US over access for NGO's so the Carter Centre's objections seem to be the latest round of that argument rather then concerns about the election itself.

The third place candidate Hamdeen Sabahi who received 4,820,273 votes (20.72%) has alleged that 900,000 ID cards were handed out to soldiers allowing them to vote for Ahmed Shafik multiple times. However he only started making those allegations after exit polls started to show that he would miss out on the run-off. Therefore rather then being credible allegations these seem to be Sabahi trying to either force himself into the run-off or get a second try at the first round.

Today (29/5/12) a mob attacked and set fire to the campaign HQ of Ahmed Shafik. This seems to be a deliberate strategy by the Muslim Brotherhood to reduce Shafik's ability to contest the run-off in order to guarantee that the Muslim Brotherhood win the Presidency. Along with their attempts to form a formal coalition in Parliament this leaves me convinced that the Brotherhood are now attempting seize absolute power in Egypt. Therefore I will be perfectly happy to see Ahmed Shafik win the Presidency.