The secretary general of the Presidential Elections Commission has denied rumors that Ahmed Shafiq garnered the most votes in the first round of the election held last week.
“The counting is not yet complete,” Hatem Bagato told the website of the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram on Sunday, saying that the final results would not be announced before considering the five appeals submitted by presidential candidates.
On Sunday, the election commission began to review the complaints over the poll, which has left Egyptians with a runoff choice between an Islamist apparatchik, Mohamed Morsy, and throwback candidate from the Hosni Mubarak era, Ahmed Shafiq.
Both contenders seek to claim the mantle of the 25 January revolution, and are appealing to the many Egyptians who voted for more centrist figures in the first round.
Bagato said the commission was investigating complaints filed by four candidates — Shafiq, leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa.
"The [election] results will be announced on Monday or Tuesday at the latest," Bagato told Reuters by telephone.
But Sabbahi, who in came a close third in the first round, challenged the results. "We have information that [military and police] conscripts voted illegally," he told a raucous crowd of supporters in Cairo late on Saturday.
Former US President Jimmy Carter said he was broadly confident about the voting process. But his Carter Center monitors highlighted several irregularities, notably their lack of access to the final aggregation of national results.
The polarized outcome has even led to suggestions from a range of liberal and other politicians — swiftly rejected by the Brotherhood — that Morsy should withdraw to allow Sabbahi to go through to the second round.
"This is unconstitutional," Essam al-Erian, a leader of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said in reference to the calls for withdrawal. He added that if Morsy quit at this stage, Shafiq would win by default.
An unnamed FJP source said the Brotherhood believed vote rigging had helped Shafiq qualify for the second round, but that the group had decided not to complain for fear that the election might be invalidated and that a re-run could endanger Morsy’s chances.
The source said he believed this was a mistake, because it meant the Brotherhood was failing to show solidarity with other groups and that it would have no credibility if it chose to appeal the runoff result next month.
