No way to tell yet how this assurance will play out in light of the new powers the military has claimed for itself. But Sharia or civil war look like the two likeliest scenarios. “Egypt generals say they’ll ‘hand over power to the elected president’ at end of month,” by Allen Pizzey for CBS News, June 18 (thanks to Wimpy):
(CBS News) CAIRO – In spite of opposition claims that Egypt’s cadre of ruling generals is setting up what they say amounts to a military dictatorship, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) announced Monday that it will “hand over power to the elected president” at the end of this month.
“The army will hand over power to the elected president in a big ceremony end-month that the entire world will witness,” the official news agency MENA quoted Major-General Mohamed El Assar, a member of the ruling army council, as saying.
“Egypt is a modern democratic country that upholds all democratic values,” the statement went on.
The Muslim Brotherhood claimed victory early Monday in Egypt’s first freely-contested presidential election, saying their candidate Mohammed Morsi had enough votes to become the first Islamist head of state in the Middle East to be elected in the wake of the tumult of the “Arab Spring”.
Official results are due on Thursday, but with more than 95 percent of votes counted from some 13,000 polling stations, the Brotherhood said Morsi had taken 52 percent. Election officials told the Reuters news agency no winner would be declared until the official tabulation was completed later in the week, but they said the Brotherhood’s numbers seemed accurate from the initial counting.
Morsi’s opponent, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq – the last prime minister to serve under ousted leader Hosni Mubarak – disputed the tally and leveled charges of electoral fraud. So far, independent monitors have not backed that up….