Egyptian president gets to work amid nation’s sky-high expectations

Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president whose powers have been curbed by the military, toured his palatial new residence — where ousted leader Hosni Mubarak once lived — and began work to form a coalition government.

Declared the winner on Sunday, a week after a run-off vote that pitted him against an ex-military officer, the Islamist — who holds that Islam is a political ideology as well as a religion — faces the challenge of meeting sky-high expectations in a nation tired of turmoil with an economy on the ropes.

However, his campaign pledge — to complete the revolution that toppled Mubarak last year but left the pillars of his rule intact — will come up against the entrenched interests of the generals who have been in charge of the transition to democracy.