Perilous Times
21 January 2012 Last updated at 10:46 ET
Egypt's Islamist parties win elections to parliament
Egypt's parliamentary elections have been spread over a six-week
period
BBC - The final results in Egypt's first post-Mubarak
parliamentary elections confirm an overwhelming victory for
Islamist parties.
The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won the
largest number of seats under Egypt's complex electoral system.
The hardline Salafist Nour party came second.
The liberal New Wafd and the secular Egyptian Bloc coalition are
some way behind them.
Egyptians voted in three phases over a six-week period to elect
the 498 members of the People's Assembly. Ten further members are
appointed by the ruling military.
Under the country's system, two-thirds of the seats are allocated
to party list candidates, and the remaining third are voted for
directly.
The overall results mean that Islamist parties control around
two-thirds of the seats in the assembly, though the final share
out of seats is not yet known.
The FJP topped the polls in the votes for party list seats. Having
also done well in the constituency votes it will end up with
between a third and a half of all MPs.
The ultra-conservative Nour party is thought to have won nearly a
quarter of the seats overall.
The new assembly is due to sit for the first time on Monday.
The FJP has announced that it will nominate Saad al-Katatni as the
assembly's speaker. Mr Katatni is a long-term Brotherhood official
and sat in the old parliament as an independent.
He told Reuters that the new assembly would be "reconciliatory".
"The priorities are meeting the demands of the revolution,
including the rights of the injured and those killed in the
uprising," he said.
Former President Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign last year
after a popular uprising.
A new president is due to be elected by June under the timetable
set by Egypt's military rulers.
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says that while the Muslim
Brotherhood appear to be finally on the brink of power it is still
the president who chooses the government - so the winners of this
election do not automatically take office.
The Brotherhood - which led the opposition to Mr Mubarak during
his 30 years in power - was until this year officially banned. In
practice, it was tolerated as long as it remained at the margins
of politics.