MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Richard Spencer, The Telegraph – “The state news agency announced that the President Election Commission was still reviewing appeals in last weekend’s count so would delay Thursday’s announcement.

‘We cannot announce when exactly the timing of the announcement of the Egypt election results will be because now we are at the stage of listening to the representatives,’ its secretary-general, Hatem Bagato, told the Reuters news agency.

‘The committee will meet afterwards to decide on whether to accept the appeals or not.’

The Muslim Brotherhood and most newspapers and independent panels claim that Mohammed Morsi, the leader of the Brotherhood’s political front the Freedom and Justice Party, won the count by a slim margin of just short of 52 per cent to 48 per cent.

An attempt to prevent him taking up office, following the army’s earlier announcement it was dissolving the Brotherhood-led parliament and taking over its powers, could trigger a potentially disastrous confrontation.

A Brotherhood spokesman, Mahmoud Ghozlan, had already warned earlier that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has ruled Egypt since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow last year, might be preparing to steal the election. He said that the refusal by Mr Morsi’s opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, a former general and Mubarak-era minister, to concede defeat and his insistence that he would be declared the victor raised suspicions that the army had ‘bad intentions’.

‘If Shafiq is declared the winner, this will make the coup clear,’ Mr Ghozlah, told the Saudi-backed newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat. ‘This encroachment on the result may lead to a confrontation between the people and the army’.” Read more.