CTVNews.ca Staff
Date: Sunday Jun. 24, 2012 10:42 AM ET
Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood has defeated former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq in the Egyptian presidential runoff election.
The country's election commission declared Morsi the winner of Egypt's first free elections by a narrow margin over Shafiq, the last prime minister under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak.
The commission said Morsi won with 51.7 per cent of the vote versus 48.3 for Shafiq.
A lot has been said about what will happen with the Arab world's most populous country under the thumb of the Salafists, but I will add my mite to it. I don't have anything original to add to this, but when big bad things happen I should at least acknowledge them.
While I'm here, the mess in Syria is getting more so (messy) especially with them shooting down that Turkish F4 recce plane a few days ago. Turkey is meeting with NATO under Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty while the Syrians strenuously deny any hostile intent. This is as well, as the Turks would smash what is left of Assad's military in short order, and it's possible that Turkey is looking for an excuse to do so. It is unlikely that this will go to Article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all), but the Turks don't need any help if they decide to go for it.
Lots of fun in the Mediterranean, slightly more than average potential for widespread mayhem in fact. If the Ikwhan manage to implement their entire platform in Egypt, particularly the "kill all the Jews" part there will be a good time had by all. This is facetious of course and possibly misleading, as even a united and motivated Egyptian Army has no chance against Israel and they know it.
As I write this it is still possible that the Egyptian Army will pull an Algeria a la 1991 and say "no, we don't think so" to Islamists running the place. This didn't work so well there (though the gov't/military won in the end) so all bets are off. The only prediction I'm comfortable standing behind right now is that things are unlikely to be boring over there. For the record, "exciting" is not something you want too much of in your life if you're most people, and most people are.
Watch and shoot...
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