Not only did Egypt pull off its first democratic presidential election in the country's history last week, but it managed to make it a relatively clean vote. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter told journalists in Cairo over the weekend that international monitors working for the Carter Center had noted minor violations during the election, but nothing so serious as to impact the result. Enthusiasm seemed high: Egypt's electoral commission reported a relatively strong turnout.

And yet the results are not what anyone expected. Neither of the two initial front runners for the June 16 and 17 runoff vote qualified for that round of voting. Instead, the two men who are now expected to come out on top are the two most polarizing candidates on the ballot: the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsy and ousted President Hosni Mubarak's former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik. "It's a charade," says Adel al-Sobki, who owns a Cairo supermarket and says he voted for the Arab nationalist candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi. "We're now stuck with either the old regime or the Muslim Brotherhood."

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Egypt

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