 |
| Antonis Samaras is cheered after New Democracy won the largest share of the votes. |
European leaders working to avert a meltdown of the single
currency gained some respite when Greek voters handed a narrow victory
to mainstream conservatives and the chance to forge a pro-euro and pro-bailout coalition.
In the single most closely watched election in years, which amounted to a referendum on whether Greece would become the first country to be forced out of the single currency, the anti-austerity radical Alexis Tsipras was also given a boost, increasing his share of the vote to more than 27%. On a momentous night in European politics, Greece's conservative New Democracy, under Antonis Samaras, appeared to have pulled the country back from the brink of what many feared would be a national catastrophe and averted a much deeper immediate crisis in Europe.
Meanwhile, the Socialists in France, under President François Hollande, secured a comfortable absolute parliamentary majority, immeasurably strengthening the president's hand in the looming battles over the future of Europe and its beleaguered currency.
European leaders postponed their departure for a G20 summit in Mexico in order to be able to digest the outcome of the ballot in Greece, which posed the most severe challenge to the EU and the euro.
The fallout from the Greek election and the broader issue of how to avert a renewed European banking crisis and stabilise the currency will dominate the Mexico negotiations, with the US and the UK pressing the leaders of Germany, France, Italy and Spain to ward off the risk of collapse by coming up with persuasive action by the end of the month.
The G20 talks will be promptly followed by a flurry of EU summitry climaxing in a European Council of heads of government in Brussels at the end of next week.
Samaras will now be asked to try to form a government, after his New Democracy narrowly defeated Tsipras's Syriza coalition of radical leftists by 2.4 percentage points. He began the quest to build a coalition with an appeal to form a government of "national salvation". He hailed the result as a "victory for Europe". In a sense, after two years of Europe supplying a lifeline to Greece, the tables turned with the Greek electorate delivering a bit more time for Europe's leaders to secure the currency's future. "The Greek people voted for the European course of Greece and that we remain in the euro," Samaras declared. "This is an important moment for Greece and the rest of Europe." Athens would honour its commitments made in exchange for rescue loans from the EU and IMF.
The arithmetic pointed to a grand coalition of the two traditionally biggest parties, New Democracy and the centre-left Pasok socialists, which mustered about 160 seats between them in the 300-seat chamber. But such a coalition between arch-enemies will be unstable.
The European powers will put pressure on the two traditionally big parties. Although ravaged in last month's inconclusive election, the two campaigned in effect to remain in the euro and to stick roughly to the draconian eurozone terms imposed on Greece as the price for two bailouts amounting to €240bn and a halving of its government debt.
Tsipras, who stunned Europe by coming from nowhere in May to take 17% of the vote and second place, improved vastly on his performance with some 27% by campaigning to reject the bailout terms, ameliorate the austerity programmes, and yet keep Greece in the euro. He might be happier to emerge as a formidable and strengthened opposition leader.
Leading EU politicians had warned the Greeks that a Tsipras victory would mean ejection from the single currency, a campaign that backfired to judge by the strength of the Syriza result. All the signs now are that, despite the tough talk in the election campaign, the Europeans will shift to relaxing the terms of Greece's bailout, while emphasising that the broad conditions have to be met.
"I can well imagine that the schedule will be discussed again," said the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, , suggesting that the timeline set for Greece's budget deficit reduction programme will be eased. Belgian officials made similar noises. There was nonetheless palpable relief across the European elite that Tsipras would probably not be able to form a government, which would have triggered a much more perilous phase in the European crisis.
In a statement , the leadership of the 17-country eurozone also hinted at a willingness to renegotiate Greece's bailout terms. "The Eurogroup reiterates its commitment to assist Greece in its adjustment effort," the statement said. "The Eurogroup expects the [EU and IMF] institutions to return to Athens as soon as a new government is in place to exchange views with the new government on the way forward."
The heads of the European Commission and Council also pledged "to stand by Greece as a member of the EU family and of the Euro area."
Attention now turns to the broader plans being hatched for next week's summit aimed at charting the way towards a more stable, durable, and centralised eurozone "banking union" and "fiscal union". The moves will see David Cameron both supporting and opposing the direction of policy in the eurozone, demanding that eurozone leaders embark on an integrationist leap while insisting on guarantees that Britain is spared being roped into any parts of the new regime. "The reality is that there are a set of things the eurozone countries need to do, and it is up to the eurozone countries to decide whether they are prepared to make the sacrifices these entail," he will say in Mexico on Monday.
The German government's response that it does not see why it should make those sacrifices at Britain's bidding in order to come up with a new regime that Britain is urging. The argument, likely to escalate over the coming weeks, is about the shape and powers for a new European "banking union" which would put some 25 of the biggest EU banks posing a "systemic risk" to the financial system under the authority of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.
"The alternatives to action that creates a more coherent euro-zone are either perpetual stagnation from a eurozone crisis that is never resolved," Cameron is to say, "or a break-up caused by a failure to address underlying economic fundamentals that would have financial consequences that would damage the world economy including Britain."
In the single most closely watched election in years, which amounted to a referendum on whether Greece would become the first country to be forced out of the single currency, the anti-austerity radical Alexis Tsipras was also given a boost, increasing his share of the vote to more than 27%. On a momentous night in European politics, Greece's conservative New Democracy, under Antonis Samaras, appeared to have pulled the country back from the brink of what many feared would be a national catastrophe and averted a much deeper immediate crisis in Europe.
Meanwhile, the Socialists in France, under President François Hollande, secured a comfortable absolute parliamentary majority, immeasurably strengthening the president's hand in the looming battles over the future of Europe and its beleaguered currency.
European leaders postponed their departure for a G20 summit in Mexico in order to be able to digest the outcome of the ballot in Greece, which posed the most severe challenge to the EU and the euro.
The fallout from the Greek election and the broader issue of how to avert a renewed European banking crisis and stabilise the currency will dominate the Mexico negotiations, with the US and the UK pressing the leaders of Germany, France, Italy and Spain to ward off the risk of collapse by coming up with persuasive action by the end of the month.
The G20 talks will be promptly followed by a flurry of EU summitry climaxing in a European Council of heads of government in Brussels at the end of next week.
Samaras will now be asked to try to form a government, after his New Democracy narrowly defeated Tsipras's Syriza coalition of radical leftists by 2.4 percentage points. He began the quest to build a coalition with an appeal to form a government of "national salvation". He hailed the result as a "victory for Europe". In a sense, after two years of Europe supplying a lifeline to Greece, the tables turned with the Greek electorate delivering a bit more time for Europe's leaders to secure the currency's future. "The Greek people voted for the European course of Greece and that we remain in the euro," Samaras declared. "This is an important moment for Greece and the rest of Europe." Athens would honour its commitments made in exchange for rescue loans from the EU and IMF.
The arithmetic pointed to a grand coalition of the two traditionally biggest parties, New Democracy and the centre-left Pasok socialists, which mustered about 160 seats between them in the 300-seat chamber. But such a coalition between arch-enemies will be unstable.
The European powers will put pressure on the two traditionally big parties. Although ravaged in last month's inconclusive election, the two campaigned in effect to remain in the euro and to stick roughly to the draconian eurozone terms imposed on Greece as the price for two bailouts amounting to €240bn and a halving of its government debt.
Tsipras, who stunned Europe by coming from nowhere in May to take 17% of the vote and second place, improved vastly on his performance with some 27% by campaigning to reject the bailout terms, ameliorate the austerity programmes, and yet keep Greece in the euro. He might be happier to emerge as a formidable and strengthened opposition leader.
Leading EU politicians had warned the Greeks that a Tsipras victory would mean ejection from the single currency, a campaign that backfired to judge by the strength of the Syriza result. All the signs now are that, despite the tough talk in the election campaign, the Europeans will shift to relaxing the terms of Greece's bailout, while emphasising that the broad conditions have to be met.
"I can well imagine that the schedule will be discussed again," said the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, , suggesting that the timeline set for Greece's budget deficit reduction programme will be eased. Belgian officials made similar noises. There was nonetheless palpable relief across the European elite that Tsipras would probably not be able to form a government, which would have triggered a much more perilous phase in the European crisis.
In a statement , the leadership of the 17-country eurozone also hinted at a willingness to renegotiate Greece's bailout terms. "The Eurogroup reiterates its commitment to assist Greece in its adjustment effort," the statement said. "The Eurogroup expects the [EU and IMF] institutions to return to Athens as soon as a new government is in place to exchange views with the new government on the way forward."
The heads of the European Commission and Council also pledged "to stand by Greece as a member of the EU family and of the Euro area."
Attention now turns to the broader plans being hatched for next week's summit aimed at charting the way towards a more stable, durable, and centralised eurozone "banking union" and "fiscal union". The moves will see David Cameron both supporting and opposing the direction of policy in the eurozone, demanding that eurozone leaders embark on an integrationist leap while insisting on guarantees that Britain is spared being roped into any parts of the new regime. "The reality is that there are a set of things the eurozone countries need to do, and it is up to the eurozone countries to decide whether they are prepared to make the sacrifices these entail," he will say in Mexico on Monday.
The German government's response that it does not see why it should make those sacrifices at Britain's bidding in order to come up with a new regime that Britain is urging. The argument, likely to escalate over the coming weeks, is about the shape and powers for a new European "banking union" which would put some 25 of the biggest EU banks posing a "systemic risk" to the financial system under the authority of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.
"The alternatives to action that creates a more coherent euro-zone are either perpetual stagnation from a eurozone crisis that is never resolved," Cameron is to say, "or a break-up caused by a failure to address underlying economic fundamentals that would have financial consequences that would damage the world economy including Britain."
Greek elections: the replay deepens the divide (Guardian Editorial)
Imagine the pass we would have reached if the future of Britain
turned on elections for Coventry city council. The eurozone has reached a
comparable position, as the eyes of a continent trained on a ballot in
one small corner of a vast economy, representing a mere 3% of the total.
The choice of a government is of natural importance to the 11 million
Greeks. But one weird consequence of the zone's lethal rigidity is that
world statesmen, financial colossuses and fearful millions beyond all
got obsessed with Sunday's knife-edge vote.
Greeks waited on Sunday night to learn if two, three or four points separated the conservative New Democracy from the leftist Syriza, but the important numbers for daily life are no longer measured in percentages. They come in great ugly fractions – the full one-fifth of output that has gone up in smoke, the quarter that has been hacked off many pensions and the half of young adults who are unemployed. As the world found out the hard way in the 1930s and is now discovering afresh, there is quite simply a limit to how much austerity people will swallow. The Greeks reject the strangulation of livelihood that they can see all around them, but are also determined to cling to the euro and avoid lurching back to a Balkan past. To survive, the big parties had to fit themselves around these basic contours.
After all, Sunday confirmed the collapse of social democracy in the form of Pasok and also saw a substantial vote sustained for the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn. Despite being led by the divisive Antonis Samaras, ND thus felt obliged to demand a sweetening of the harsh bailout which it has championed. Even then, it ended down several points on its bad loss of 2009. If it is victory, it's not victory as we know it – hence the immediate spin about a grand coalition. Syriza, meanwhile, which in 2009 was a fringe coalition of malcontents ranging from Greens to Trotskyites, has toned down its Brussels bashing. Its charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, penned FT op-eds swearing to stick in the euro, as he trod a path from obscurity to the brink of victory in a couple of months.
Europe's north will soon have to choose between renegotiating so the oxygen of liquidity can flow on less ruinous terms, or else standing back and watching the Greek banks go bust with a bang. Take the second course, and the amputation of the euro's first limb will follow. After this month's Spanish bank rescue failed to soothe market nerves, the immediate question would then be "who next?". A currency of supposedly eternal integrity could be rapidly dismembered. After a campaign whose only effect was to deepen the ND-Syriza faultline by drawing support from elsewhere to both sides of this divide, the two main parliamentary caucuses are bigger. Beyond that, it was unclear what had changed – there's no majority, no platform for stable government, still less any prospect of early recovery.
Having previously intervened to try and frustrate the arrival of a new French president, who on Sunday cemented his power in the National Assembly, Angela Merkel saw fit to hector the Greeks ahead of the vote. The German chancellor's understandable aim may have been capping the huge bailout costs, but the close vote does not suggest this was wise. A campaign of fear may just have secured the sort of supplicant Europe is used to doing business with, but it will not for long avoid a renegotiation, still less achieve anything more enduring. The grip of a new government with a shaky mandate will not be aided by fears of financial subjugation taking a political turn.
At home, George Osborne is deep in the danger zone he once boasted he had got Britain out of. At the Mansion House last week, he proclaimed "new firepower" in the face of the "crisis on our doorstep". But the coming days could do for lingering hopes of an island nation remaining an island of economic tranquillity. Across the continent, the last best hope is the old, dormant doctrine of ever-closer union. It is more likely to be a case of never-closer union if integration acquires the taint of domination, as opposed to partnership.
Greeks waited on Sunday night to learn if two, three or four points separated the conservative New Democracy from the leftist Syriza, but the important numbers for daily life are no longer measured in percentages. They come in great ugly fractions – the full one-fifth of output that has gone up in smoke, the quarter that has been hacked off many pensions and the half of young adults who are unemployed. As the world found out the hard way in the 1930s and is now discovering afresh, there is quite simply a limit to how much austerity people will swallow. The Greeks reject the strangulation of livelihood that they can see all around them, but are also determined to cling to the euro and avoid lurching back to a Balkan past. To survive, the big parties had to fit themselves around these basic contours.
After all, Sunday confirmed the collapse of social democracy in the form of Pasok and also saw a substantial vote sustained for the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn. Despite being led by the divisive Antonis Samaras, ND thus felt obliged to demand a sweetening of the harsh bailout which it has championed. Even then, it ended down several points on its bad loss of 2009. If it is victory, it's not victory as we know it – hence the immediate spin about a grand coalition. Syriza, meanwhile, which in 2009 was a fringe coalition of malcontents ranging from Greens to Trotskyites, has toned down its Brussels bashing. Its charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, penned FT op-eds swearing to stick in the euro, as he trod a path from obscurity to the brink of victory in a couple of months.
Europe's north will soon have to choose between renegotiating so the oxygen of liquidity can flow on less ruinous terms, or else standing back and watching the Greek banks go bust with a bang. Take the second course, and the amputation of the euro's first limb will follow. After this month's Spanish bank rescue failed to soothe market nerves, the immediate question would then be "who next?". A currency of supposedly eternal integrity could be rapidly dismembered. After a campaign whose only effect was to deepen the ND-Syriza faultline by drawing support from elsewhere to both sides of this divide, the two main parliamentary caucuses are bigger. Beyond that, it was unclear what had changed – there's no majority, no platform for stable government, still less any prospect of early recovery.
Having previously intervened to try and frustrate the arrival of a new French president, who on Sunday cemented his power in the National Assembly, Angela Merkel saw fit to hector the Greeks ahead of the vote. The German chancellor's understandable aim may have been capping the huge bailout costs, but the close vote does not suggest this was wise. A campaign of fear may just have secured the sort of supplicant Europe is used to doing business with, but it will not for long avoid a renegotiation, still less achieve anything more enduring. The grip of a new government with a shaky mandate will not be aided by fears of financial subjugation taking a political turn.
At home, George Osborne is deep in the danger zone he once boasted he had got Britain out of. At the Mansion House last week, he proclaimed "new firepower" in the face of the "crisis on our doorstep". But the coming days could do for lingering hopes of an island nation remaining an island of economic tranquillity. Across the continent, the last best hope is the old, dormant doctrine of ever-closer union. It is more likely to be a case of never-closer union if integration acquires the taint of domination, as opposed to partnership.
Egypt's generals act to negate outcome of presidential poll
Constitutional declaration cements power of military as Brotherhood claims win in bitterly fought election
 |
| Egyptian women wait to vote during the second day of the presidential runoff election in Cairo. |
Egypt's
generals awarded themselves sweeping political powers in an 11th-hour
constitutional declaration that tied the hands of the country's incoming
president and cemented military authority over the post-Mubarak era.
The announcement on Sunday night came as early presidential election results put the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi ahead of his rival Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's final prime minister and an unabashed champion of the old regime. But with thousands of polling stations yet to declare following the two-day runoff vote, the overall winner was too close to call.
Pro-change activists and human rights campaigners said the junta's constitutional declaration – which came just days after judges extended the army's ability to arrest civilians and following the dissolution of the Brotherhood-dominated parliament by the country's top court – rendered the scheduled handover of power to a democratically elected executive meaningless.
The Brotherhood was quick to label the declaration "null and unconstitutional", raising the prospect of a dramatic showdown within the highest institutions of the state.
In a final runoff election marked by relentless fear-mongering and negative campaigning on both sides, many polling stations remained near-empty for much of the two-day ballot – with potential voters seemingly put off by temperatures that reached 40C in the capital, and the increasingly oppressive political climate of military-led manipulation and national division that has gripped the country a year-and-a-half after the start of its ongoing revolution.
As ballot counting began inside more than 13,000 schools, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party insisted that Morsi, 60-year-old engineer, was on course for a clear victory unless state-sponsored electoral fraud dictated otherwise. But local media reports and anecdotal evidence suggested a closer race, with millions backing Shafik, in a last-ditch effort to prevent political Islamists from taking power.
"We have concerns about many violations but up until now we haven't been able to determine whether they will affect the electoral picture as a whole," Nermine Mohamed, a media coordinator for the Morsi campaign, said. "From our surveys on the ground and the main trends witnessed by our campaigners in the street, we are very optimistic that the Egyptian people are voting to protect the revolution and that Dr Morsi is going to win."
Many of those who put an X next to Morsi's name were motivated more by fear of the alternative rather than any endorsement of the Brotherhood's electoral programme. Daila Rabie, co-founder of the Egypt Monocle media outlet, said: "I believe that if Shafik has made it this far then he's likely to make it all the way, and I have to do whatever I can, whatever is in my power, to make this stop - and what's in my power is to vote for the other candidate.
"It's the much, much lesser of two evils," added the 29-year-old. "If Morsi wins there's leeway for opposition, but if Shafik wins the revolution will be completely crushed."
With estimates of the first day turnout as low as 15%, daily newspaper al-Shorouk in its front-page headline on Sunday declared "boycott" the only victor. Many young revolutionaries refused to endorse either of the two well-oiled political machines – the Brotherhood on the one hand and the army-backed remnants of Mubarak's theoretically dissolved NDP party on the other – on the ballot paper, with some instead scrawling in the names of comic-book heroes, belly-dancers or protesters killed by security forces in last year's anti-Mubarak uprising.
"These elections are being conducted under Scaf [the Supreme Council of Armed Forces], which took power when Mubarak was toppled in February 2011], said Omar Kamel a musician and activist who has been one of the leading voices in favour of a boycott campaign. "The bedrock of Scaf's existence is completely illegitimate, and that makes all the fictional legal mechanisms put in place to justify the generals' authority illegitimate as well. This electoral contest will be decided by which of the two big patronage networks can mobilise its footsoldiers more effectively, and the winner will in no way represent the will of the Egyptian people."
Kamel claimed the anticipated meagre turnout would strike a hammer blow at the new president's credibility and make it harder to justify draconian crackdowns by the state against pro-change demonstrators. "Given a choice between eating shit or eating shit, most Egyptians have decided they're not hungry," he concluded.
Those that did choose to participate found themselves drawn into a web of discord that has pitted friend, colleagues and family members against each other amid a toxic atmosphere of distrust. On Sunday one national news outlet exhorted its readers to keep out the Brotherhood in order to prevent Egypt from becoming "the next Afghanistan", and SMS text messages circulated among Egyptians holidaying on the Mediterranean coast warning recipients that if they didn't vote for Shafik they might find themselves unable to take similar vacations ever again. Meanwhile, Egypt's most prominent football star and Brotherhood supporter, Mohamed Abou-Treika, caused a stir by refusing to have his photo taken with a Shafik delegate in a local polling station, opting instead to face the cameras alone wearing T-shirt emblazoned with the words: "The day I give up your rights, I'll surely be dead."
Many Egyptians took to social media to detail family rifts over the presidency, with the hashtag CandidateDomesticFights picking up steam on Twitter. According to local media reports, one Shafik voter in the Upper Egyptian province of Minya attempted to summarily divorce his wife in the polling station after she revealed she would be voting for Morsi.
Although an official announcement of the winner isn't due until later this week, results should become apparent on Monday. But whoever assumes high office will find themselves tangled in a bureaucratic mess, after the latest legal twists awarded legislative authority to the generals and put the constitution-writing process effectively in the hands of the junta, who now claim the authority to contest any proposed clause. In a symbolic reminder to citizens of where political power really resides, army helicopters circled above Cairo and other key urban centres throughout Saturday and Sunday. Some analysts believe that the lack of uproar by traditional political forces at Scaf's "judicial coup", in favour of devoting energy to the presidential race, will prove a major mistake in the long-term.
"The decision to dissolve parliament sounds the death knell to the credibility of the political process in Egypt [and] I think it's hardly worth giving credence to an entire political system that has no credibility," wrote Issandr el-Amrani at the Arabist website . "The only thing I see in Egypt's future is military rule, civil disobedience, and violence. The Scaf is mostly responsible for this, but those who accept this verdict and Scaf taking over legislative powers have their role too. History will remember them."
The announcement on Sunday night came as early presidential election results put the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi ahead of his rival Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's final prime minister and an unabashed champion of the old regime. But with thousands of polling stations yet to declare following the two-day runoff vote, the overall winner was too close to call.
Pro-change activists and human rights campaigners said the junta's constitutional declaration – which came just days after judges extended the army's ability to arrest civilians and following the dissolution of the Brotherhood-dominated parliament by the country's top court – rendered the scheduled handover of power to a democratically elected executive meaningless.
The Brotherhood was quick to label the declaration "null and unconstitutional", raising the prospect of a dramatic showdown within the highest institutions of the state.
In a final runoff election marked by relentless fear-mongering and negative campaigning on both sides, many polling stations remained near-empty for much of the two-day ballot – with potential voters seemingly put off by temperatures that reached 40C in the capital, and the increasingly oppressive political climate of military-led manipulation and national division that has gripped the country a year-and-a-half after the start of its ongoing revolution.
As ballot counting began inside more than 13,000 schools, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party insisted that Morsi, 60-year-old engineer, was on course for a clear victory unless state-sponsored electoral fraud dictated otherwise. But local media reports and anecdotal evidence suggested a closer race, with millions backing Shafik, in a last-ditch effort to prevent political Islamists from taking power.
"We have concerns about many violations but up until now we haven't been able to determine whether they will affect the electoral picture as a whole," Nermine Mohamed, a media coordinator for the Morsi campaign, said. "From our surveys on the ground and the main trends witnessed by our campaigners in the street, we are very optimistic that the Egyptian people are voting to protect the revolution and that Dr Morsi is going to win."
Many of those who put an X next to Morsi's name were motivated more by fear of the alternative rather than any endorsement of the Brotherhood's electoral programme. Daila Rabie, co-founder of the Egypt Monocle media outlet, said: "I believe that if Shafik has made it this far then he's likely to make it all the way, and I have to do whatever I can, whatever is in my power, to make this stop - and what's in my power is to vote for the other candidate.
"It's the much, much lesser of two evils," added the 29-year-old. "If Morsi wins there's leeway for opposition, but if Shafik wins the revolution will be completely crushed."
With estimates of the first day turnout as low as 15%, daily newspaper al-Shorouk in its front-page headline on Sunday declared "boycott" the only victor. Many young revolutionaries refused to endorse either of the two well-oiled political machines – the Brotherhood on the one hand and the army-backed remnants of Mubarak's theoretically dissolved NDP party on the other – on the ballot paper, with some instead scrawling in the names of comic-book heroes, belly-dancers or protesters killed by security forces in last year's anti-Mubarak uprising.
"These elections are being conducted under Scaf [the Supreme Council of Armed Forces], which took power when Mubarak was toppled in February 2011], said Omar Kamel a musician and activist who has been one of the leading voices in favour of a boycott campaign. "The bedrock of Scaf's existence is completely illegitimate, and that makes all the fictional legal mechanisms put in place to justify the generals' authority illegitimate as well. This electoral contest will be decided by which of the two big patronage networks can mobilise its footsoldiers more effectively, and the winner will in no way represent the will of the Egyptian people."
Kamel claimed the anticipated meagre turnout would strike a hammer blow at the new president's credibility and make it harder to justify draconian crackdowns by the state against pro-change demonstrators. "Given a choice between eating shit or eating shit, most Egyptians have decided they're not hungry," he concluded.
Those that did choose to participate found themselves drawn into a web of discord that has pitted friend, colleagues and family members against each other amid a toxic atmosphere of distrust. On Sunday one national news outlet exhorted its readers to keep out the Brotherhood in order to prevent Egypt from becoming "the next Afghanistan", and SMS text messages circulated among Egyptians holidaying on the Mediterranean coast warning recipients that if they didn't vote for Shafik they might find themselves unable to take similar vacations ever again. Meanwhile, Egypt's most prominent football star and Brotherhood supporter, Mohamed Abou-Treika, caused a stir by refusing to have his photo taken with a Shafik delegate in a local polling station, opting instead to face the cameras alone wearing T-shirt emblazoned with the words: "The day I give up your rights, I'll surely be dead."
Many Egyptians took to social media to detail family rifts over the presidency, with the hashtag CandidateDomesticFights picking up steam on Twitter. According to local media reports, one Shafik voter in the Upper Egyptian province of Minya attempted to summarily divorce his wife in the polling station after she revealed she would be voting for Morsi.
Although an official announcement of the winner isn't due until later this week, results should become apparent on Monday. But whoever assumes high office will find themselves tangled in a bureaucratic mess, after the latest legal twists awarded legislative authority to the generals and put the constitution-writing process effectively in the hands of the junta, who now claim the authority to contest any proposed clause. In a symbolic reminder to citizens of where political power really resides, army helicopters circled above Cairo and other key urban centres throughout Saturday and Sunday. Some analysts believe that the lack of uproar by traditional political forces at Scaf's "judicial coup", in favour of devoting energy to the presidential race, will prove a major mistake in the long-term.
"The decision to dissolve parliament sounds the death knell to the credibility of the political process in Egypt [and] I think it's hardly worth giving credence to an entire political system that has no credibility," wrote Issandr el-Amrani at the Arabist website . "The only thing I see in Egypt's future is military rule, civil disobedience, and violence. The Scaf is mostly responsible for this, but those who accept this verdict and Scaf taking over legislative powers have their role too. History will remember them."