Judith Miller

The two candidates who won the largest number of votes and now face a run-off in mid-June represent two traditional power centers that have battled each other for decades – ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s once omnipotent “secular” security regime that has ruled Egypt since 1952, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the 84-year-old organization that has struggled under-and-above ground to turn Egypt into an Islamic state.
The Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi (25.3%) and former Mubarak prime minister Ahmed Shafiq (24.9%) won the most votes. Both men have already begun trying to win the support of the third and fourth most popular candidates — leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi (who won roughly 21.5%) and a moderate Islamist who broke with the Brotherhood, Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh (who garnered some 19%).
The initial outcome hugely disappointed the youth movement that succeeded in mobilizing the mass protests in Tahrir Square that ended President Mubarak’s 30- year rule in only 18 days. Al Ahram, a leading Egyptian paper, quoted Ahmed Khairy, a spokesman for the secular, liberal Free Egyptians Party, as calling the initial round’s outcome “the worst possible scenario” for Egypt. He said that Egyptians now faced a choice between Morsi, an “Islamic fascist” and Shafiq, a “military fascist.”