From prisoner to president

In a reversal of fortunes unthinkable a year and a half ago, an Islamist jailed by Hosni Mubarak has succeeded him as president of the biggest Arab nation in a victory at the ballot box which has historic consequences for Egypt and the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi will not enjoy the extent of modern, pharaonic powers exercised by Mubarak: those have been curtailed by a military establishment which will decide just how much he will be able to do in government. Still, the US-trained engineer’s victory in the country’s first free presidential election breaks a tradition of domination by men from the armed forces, which have provided every Egyptian leader since the overthrow of the monarchy 60 years ago, and installs in office a group that drew on 84 years of grassroots activism to catapult Mursi into the presidency. He has promised a moderate, modern Islamist agenda to steer Egypt into a new democratic era where autocracy will be replaced by transparent government that respects human rights and revives the fortunes of a powerful Arab state long in decline. Mursi is promising an “Egyptian renaissance with an Islamic foundation”. “I will treat everyone equally and be a servant of the Egyptian people,” Mursi said at his campaign headquarters in Cairo shortly after polling ended, a week before his victory was confirmed by the Mubarak-era body overseeing the vote. But many Egyptians, not least the Christian minority, remain suspicious of Mursi and even more so of the group he represents. Anti-Brotherhood sentiment, fuelled by both a hostile media and some of the group’s policies, has soared in recent weeks. Ahmed Shafiq, the former general he defeated, won nearly as many votes as Mursi, signalling that Egypt is a nation that is anything but united around the idea of Brotherhood rule. Mursi won a little less than a quarter of the first-round vote in May. That a man who served as Mubarak’s last prime minister was so close to victory has been seen as one sign of failure by the Brotherhood - which has described itself as the victim of a vicious campaign orchestrated by its enemies. At first, Mursi pitched himself as a conservative Islamist - the only one in the field, he said. He repeatedly promised to implement Islamic law. “It was for the sake of the Islamic Shariah that men were ... thrown into prison. Their blood and existence rests on our shoulders now,” Mursi said in one of his early campaign rallies. Though not one of those jailed for years, he was held on more than one occasion by Mubarak’s feared state security men. But he has seldom spelled out what precisely his call to implement Shariah would mean for Egypt, where piety runs deep and the constitution already defines the principles of the Shariah as the main source of legislation. Mursi has said Brotherhood rule would not mean that Egypt will be a theocracy, adding that there is little difference between the phrase “the principles of the Shariah” - the term found in the current constitution - and the Shariah itself. Mursi won few open endorsements from politicians and parties beyond the various Islamist factions, though the “April 6 movement” - one of the protest groups that ignited the anti-Mubarak revolt - was a notable exception. “We face a decisive moment in our history, we must halt the farce of the former regime,” Mursi said in one of his last television interviews before the run-off. “We face a new era and we cannot allow the return of the former regime.”