The Supreme Presidential Election Commission (SPEC) has announced that the results of the runoff election between feloul Ahmed Shafiq and Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi will be announced tomorrow at 3:00 PM local-time.
The results of the presidential election will be announced on Sunday at 3 pm, Presidential Elections Commission Secretary General Hatem Bagato said Saturday.
Bagato said in a statement that Farouk Sultan, head of the PEC, will be the person who will announce the result at a press conference on Sunday.
Since the runoff last week, both candidates have claimed victory. Tensions in Midan Tahrir and elsewhere in Egypt are running high as citizens observe the lengths to which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has gone to 1) protect their political and economic interests and 2) neuter the power of the office of the presidency.
I have characterized (Part VII, Part VIII) the current showdown between SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood as an iteration of the long pre-revolutionary existential struggle between Egypt's military-security state and the Brotherhood's vision of a civilian state. Reports indicate that behind-the-scene negotiations between SCAF and the Brotherhood may provide a way forward. This will of course not "solve" the deeper social and political issues at the core of the struggle, but may provide an opportunity to allow the game to continue in the political realm and forestall devolution into a non-political conflict.
Al-Ahram, A deal could be reached to end current confrontation: SCAF, Brotherhood sources
Sources close to both the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood confirmed the two sides were heavily engaged in high-level talks that could produce "a political deal", which is likely to include announcing the Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi Egypt's president elect.
According to a source close to the negotiations, the SCAF wants Mursi to desist from proclaiming himself president-elect, which he came close to doing at a press conference earlier on Friday. They also want him to pull the bulk of his supporters out of Tahrir and to agree to work within the parameters set out by SCAF in its annex constitutional declaration. The annex, enacted by the SCAF earlier in the week, gives the military a share in the prerogatives of the Egyptian president, as well as the legislative powers of the dissolved parliament.
For their part, Mursi and the Brotherhood insist that parliament not be dissolved, and that reelections would be held only for the one third of seats elected in accordance with the individual candidacy system. MPs elected in accordance with the party list proportional representation system, who account for the remaining two thirds of the assembly, would retain in their seats. The Muslim Brotherhood would also like SCAF to delete from the constitutional annex such language as seems to directly undermine the powers of the president, including his right to appoint the minister of defence.
Reports of "deals" between SCAF and the Brotherhood have been quite numerous over the last 16 months, so we should probably take this report (in state-owned media) as framing what
needs to happen from the junta's perspective as much as reporting what may actually be up for negotiation in these discussions.
SCAF controls the high-ground in this conflict, as they currently hold not only absolute executive and legislative power but also the legal authority to draft the new constitution independent of input from elected officials or those appointed by the now-dissolved Parliament. The Brotherhood knows that the future of their organization is electoral politics and the courts, and they are certainly cognizant of the pending legal case questioning their standing as a legally recognized organization with a political wing. In other words, the Brotherhood is being compelled to accept whatever power (real and/or symbolic) they may be assigned or risk organizational dissolution and excision from the political process altogether.
We will see tomorrow what compromises have been accepted, and by whom. A largely symbolic Morsi presidency and weak Parliament fronting an entrenched and legally protected SCAF seems like a realistic outcome, yet one which ensures only the continuation of a generations-long struggle and does little, or nothing, to advance the revolutionary goal of the dismantling of the military-security state.