ISLAMISTS
trounced their liberal rivals in the opening phase of Egypt's first election
since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, figures showed yesterday, with one in four
voters choosing hardline Salafists.
Islamist
parties won 65 per cent of all votes cast for parties in the first round of
parliamentary polls last week, while the main secular liberal coalition managed
just 13.4 per cent.
Among the
Islamist vote, the moderate Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) of the Muslim
Brotherhood won 36.6 per cent, followed by the hardline Salafist Al-Nur party
with 24.4 per cent and the moderate Al-Wasat with 4.3 per cent.
"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
Brotherhood had been widely forecast to triumph in the first free election in
decades. It is the country's most organised political group and is well known
for its charity work and opposition to Mubarak's 30-year regime.
But the
showing from Salafist groups, which advocate a fundamentalist interpretation of
Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, was a surprise, raising fears of an
ultra-conservative and overtly religious 498-member new lower parliament.
The
Salafis, newcomers who founded parties only after the toppling of Mubarak in
February, trailed the FJP only slightly in the city of Alexandria and won a
majority in northern Kafr el-Sheikh and Damietta provinces.
Followers
of the Salafi strain of Islam advocate a stricter segregation of the sexes, the
full veiling of women and a ban on alcohol.
Parliamentary
candidate Abdel-Moneim El-Shahat last week raised hackles when he accused the
late Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel prize winner, of "inciting
promiscuity, prostitution and atheism."
"Since
forming our party, it has been the party that worked most on the ground and
brought up issues such as education and the economy," Al-Nur's head Emad
al-Din Abdel Ghaffour told AFP yesterday.
He
credited a strong grassroots campaign for his party's surprise showing despite
a "campaign of defamation" and stressed that the party would not
discriminate against women or the country's eight million Christians.
There
were few bright spots for the liberal secular movement which played a large
role in the 18-day uprising that led Mubarak to stand down and hand power to a
council of military leaders charged with ushering in democracy.
Mohammed
Hamed, a candidate with the liberal Free Egyptians party, warned that the
Islamists would face resistance if they enforced a strict interpretation of
Islamic law.
"All
the people will turn into the opposition. Most Muslims are not extremist. If
they do not feel the danger (of hardline Islamism) yet, they will if it is
applied," he said.
There was
also the first reported violence yesterday since polls opened on Monday, when
the driver of a liberal candidate died in a gunfight with Al-Wasat supporters
in the northern Manufia province, MENA news agency reported.
The election
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 1979 peace agreement with Egypt, expressed deep
concern over the trend.
"We
are worried," Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel public radio
yesterday, adding that he hoped Egypt "won't become an extremist Islamist
state because that would put the whole region in danger."
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that the treaty remains in the interest of
Egypt as well as of its neighbours.
"We
hope that any government to be formed in Egypt will recognise the importance of
keeping the peace treaty with Israel, as a value of its own and as a foundation
to the financial and security stability of the region," he said yesterday.
The
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.
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.
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.
The
figures above are for the party results.
Both the
FJP and Al-Nur stand to gain further seats in run-off elections on Monday for
the individual candidates. Only four out of 56 individual seats were won
outright in the first round of voting.
The FJP
said it had 45 candidates in the 52 run-offs on Monday, while Al-Nur said it
had 26.
The
Brotherhood and other political parties are now expected to face a fierce power
struggle for control with the interim army regime over the appointment of a
cabinet and the drafting of a new constitution.
The per
centages were calculated by AFP on the basis of total number of valid votes
cast.
The FJP
won 3.56 million out of a total 9.73 million votes cast, or 36.6 per cent.
Al-Nur party won 2.37 million, or 24.4 per cent, and the Wasat party 415,590
votes, or 4.3 per cent.
The main
liberal coalition, the Egyptian Bloc, won 1.29 million votes or 13.4 per cent.
by: Fathin Afiqah binti Abdul Aziz
