Egypt's Islamists triumph in election

Muslim Brotherhood Islamists trounced their liberal rivals in the opening phase of Egypt's first post-revolution election, official figures showed on Sunday, with one in four voters opting for hardline Salafists .
Islamist parties won 65 percent of all votes cast for parties in the first round of parliamentary elections, while the secular liberals who played a key part in the country's January-February revolution managed just 13.35 percent.
Among the Islamist vote, the moderate Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) of the Muslim Brotherhood won 36.62 percent, followed by the hardline Salafist Al-Nur party with 24.36 percent and the moderate Al-Wasat with 4.27 of valid ballots.
"We welcome the Egyptian people's choice," FJP spokesman Ahmed Sobea told AFP. "Egypt now needs all parties to cooperate together to get it out of its crisis."
The Muslim Brotherhood had been widely forecast to triumph as the country's most organised political group, well known after decades of charitable work and opposition to the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak.
But the showing from Salafist groups, which advocate a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, was a surprise, raising fears of a more conservative and overtly religious 498-member new parliament.
The Salafis, newcomers who shunned elections during the rule of Mubarak who was toppled in February, trailed the FJP only slightly in the city of Alexandria and won a majority in northern Kafr el-Sheikh province.
The results in Egypt fit a pattern established in Tunisia and Morocco where Islamists have also gained in elections as they benefit from the new freedoms brought by the pro-democracy movements of the Arab Spring.
Israel, which shares a border and peace agreement with Egypt, expressed deep concern over the trend.
"The process of Islamisation in Arab countries is very worrying," Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told television on Saturday, before adding that it was "premature to say how these changes will affect the region."
The Muslim Brotherhood has been at pains to stress its commitment to multi-party democracy, inclusiveness and civil liberties, while also advocating the application of sharia law.
Nevertheless, the prospect of an Islamist-dominated parliament raises fears among liberals about religious freedom in a country with the Middle East's largest Christian minority and women's rights.
"Islamic culture is compatible with democratic principles," FJP vice president Essam al-Erian told AFP last week.
Voting on Monday and Tuesday was only the opening phase of an election for a new lower house of parliament that is taking place in three stages, but the returns reveal the main political trends now shaping Egypt.
Only one third of districts have voted. The rest of the country will go the polls in a further two stages later this month and in January.
Voters were required to pass three votes: two for individual candidates and one for a party or coalition.
All but four of the individual contests in this week's election will go into a run-off scheduled for Monday because no candidate gained an outright majority.
Many of these will be contested between an FJP candidate and someone from the Al-Nur party or another Islamist party.
There appeared few bright spots for the liberal secular movement which played a key role in the February overthrow of three decades of Mubarak rule in February after an 18-day uprising.
Mohammed Abdel Ghani, a liberal candidate, told the independent Al-Shorouq newspaper that his movement needed to counter propaganda that "non-Islamist candidates were infidels."
According to independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, no women were elected in the first round.
The Brotherhood and other political parties are expected to face a fierce power struggle for control with the interim army regime which took over when Mubarak stepped down.
The first test will be over the formation of a new caretaker government, with the Brotherhood insisting on the right to form a cabinet.
The second struggle with be over a new constitution next year and the relative powers given to parliament, a new president to be elected by next June, and the army.
For Monday and Tuesday's vote, elections committee secretary general Yusri Abdel Karim said final percentages would not be given until the end of ballotting for the lower house of parliament on January 10.
The percentages were calculated by AFP on the basis of total votes cast.
The FJP won 3.56 million out of a total 9.73 million votes cast. Al-Nur party won 2.37 million, and the Wasat party 415,590 votes.
The main liberal coalition, the Egyptian Bloc, won 1.29 million votes.
After the lower house is elected in January, Egyptians will go to the polls for a further three rounds of voting to elect an upper chamber.