Brotherhood and generals in Egyptian power struggle

Egypt’s agonised passage from revolution to democracy was in limbo last night as the Muslim Brotherhood claimed victory in a presidential election while the generals who took over from Hosni Mubarak decreed it was they who would keep most power.

The former air force commander running against the Islamist dismissed Mohammed Morsy’s self-declared triumph as a bid to “hijack” the election. Ahmed Shafik, who was also Mubarak’s last prime minister, said it was he in fact who was ahead.

As a day of counting, and mutual jibes over violations, wore on, there was no official word on how the two-day run-off went and electoral supervisors warned they may not publish any result until Thursday — prolonging what for many Egyptians has become a wearisome deadlock between a military past and religious future.

Shafik’s camp insisted he led by two to four points but even sources in the army, which has fought the Brotherhood in six decades of military rule, indicated they were preparing to accept Morsy had won Egypt’s first free presidential vote.

Whoever emerges as president — and at least one electoral official privately endorsed Morsy’s claim to be leading by 52% to 48% with the bulk of votes counted — he will find his powers tightly circumscribed by a decree issued by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi’s military council as polls closed on Sunday.

Having last week dissolved the parliament that was elected in January with a big Islamist majority, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said on Sunday it would now take back the assembly’s legislative powers and could also step in to break a deadlock in drafting a new constitution.

Liberals and Islamists called it a “military coup”.

Tantawi, Mubarak’s defence minister for 20 years, promised Egyptians who entrusted him with their revolutionary victory to hand power to civilians by July 1. That pledge, endorsed by the US, the army’s $1.3bn-a-year backer, would be satisfied, a military council member said, with a ceremony to be held by June 30 to swear in the new civilian head of state.