Global media is reporting that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has won 47% of the seats in the country’s parliament. According to a Bloomberg report:
Jan 21, 2012 11:00 PM GMT+0100 Islamists will dominate Egypt’s first parliament following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak almost a year ago as the country prepares for the anniversary of the protests that ended his three-decade rule. The alliance led by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 235 of the 498 elected seats, or 47 percent, in the lower house, party spokesman Ahmed Sobea said yesterday by phone. The party nominated its secretary-general, Mohamed Saad El-Katatni, as the speaker of parliament. While the assembly, due to hold its first session tomorrow, is supposed to select a committee that will write a new constitution, its exact powers remain unclear. Seven weeks of elections have failed to allay tensions between the activists who ousted Mubarak and the military council that took power from him. Protesters are calling for mass rallies on Jan. 25, the anniversary of the start of the uprising against Mubarak, to demand the generals transfer power to civilians. “Political and economic reforms are the main challenges facing us,” Sobhi Saleh, who won a parliamentary seat for the Freedom and Justice Party, said in a telephone interview. “We’re moving from a phase of a revolution to having a state. Building a state is a difficult challenge.” The head of the ruling military council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, assigned 10 non-elected members to the parliament, Al Jazeera television reported. Prisoner Release The military council will release 1,959 prisoners convicted by military courts after the Jan. 25 uprising, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported yesterday, citing the head of the military judicial committee, Major General Adel el-Mursi. Among those to be freed are Maikel Nabil, an internet blogger, Mena said. Putting an end to the trial of civilians in military courts is a main demand of protesters. Of the 332 members of parliament elected from party lists, Freedom and Justice won 127, Elections Commission head Abdel Moez Ibrahim told reporters yesterday in Cairo. The more conservative Salafi Muslim bloc led by the Nour party took 96 seats, while two secular groups placed third and fourth, with the Wafd party obtaining 36 seats and the Egyptian Bloc getting 33 seats, he said.
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Meanwhile global media are also reporting that an IMF delegation met with leaders of the Egyptian Brotherhood’s political party to discuss assistance and economic policy. According to a GlobalPost report from last week:
…..there is also anger over the IMF negotiations with an unelected, non-civilian government that has failed to articulate a comprehensive economic vision and presided over a repressive transition to democratic rule. To its credit, the IMF delegation sent to Egypt – and which departed yesterday – met with leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, whose candidates just won a near majority in parliament, to discuss assistance and economic policy. Some saw it as a sign that the IMF preferred not to negotiate with the generals, instead ensuring the assistance had broad and legitimate political support.