AppId is over the quota
The roughly nine governorates voting on Tuesday included the historic Brotherhood strongholds of Gharbiya and Daqahliyya in the Delta, where a number of the group’s best known candidates are running, including Mohamed Beltaggi, a former member of Parliament. And according to many estimates, its Freedom and Justice Party started the day with roughly 50 percent of the seats awarded in the first two rounds of the vote, having won roughly 40 percent of the seats allocated by party voting and a higher percentage of the seats contested by individual candidates.
Before Tuesday, the Brotherhood’s party had been forecast to win a plurality but not a majority.
The outcome remains uncertain, however, in part because Egypt’s military rulers have yet to spell out the formula that will be used to allocate seats according to each party’s share of the vote.
In an interview on Tuesday, Essam el-Erian, a leader of the Freedom and Justice Party who was elected to Parliament from Giza, said he doubted the party would win more than half the seats. “I doubt it,” he said. “Nothing is impossible but it would be very difficult.”
But if Freedom and Justice won a clear majority, it would enable the Brotherhood’s party to govern without forming a coalition, if it chose.
The Brotherhood has said repeatedly that it intends to form a coalition or unity government, in part to avoid unnerving Egyptian liberals or Westerners who may fear an Islamist takeover. It may also wish to share the responsibility for what is expected to be a difficult period of adjustment for the Egyptian state and economy.
But a majority that removed the necessity of forming a coalition government would diminish the power of the partners in any alliance as well as any other parties outside the coalition. That would reduce the clout of the ultraconservative Islamists who have so far trailed in second place in the first two rounds of the voting, winning as much as 25 percent of the seats by most estimates. And it would also reduce the voice of the various liberal parties, led by the business-friendly Free Egyptians and the left-leaning Social Democrats, who have won most of the remainder of the seats.
The Brotherhood has so far sought to ally itself with the liberals rather than the most conservative Islamists and it has reiterated that it has no plans to form an all-Islamist government. The strength of the ultra-conservatives, known as Salafis, has been the biggest surprise of the voting so far. Many espouse hard-line views seeking sharp reductions in the sale of alcohol, opposing women’s participation in political leadership or public life, and potentially restricting arts and popular culture deemed profane or sacrilegious.
Tuesday’s voting also sets up an potential confrontation between the new Parliament and Egypt’s military rulers. Brotherhood leaders have said they expect the Parliament to take authority over the hiring and firing of a prime minister to run the interim government. The military rulers have said they intend to retain that authority and allocate very little power to the Parliament.
The lower house is Egypt’s primarily legislative body, and Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the top military officer who is now acting as de facto chief executive, has scheduled its first session for January 23, two days before the anniversary of the outbreak of protests that ousted Mr. Mubarak.
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