The Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide has described the presidential election runoff as a choice between a “possible renaissance and fatal setback.”
In a statement on the Freedom and Justice Party’s Facebook page, Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie said the voting choice will be difficult and dangerous.
“The [revolution] martyrs’ souls urge us not to relinquish what they sacrificed to remove all the former [Mubarak] regime figures and reconstruct Egypt,” he wrote.
Badie cautioned against attempts by former Mubarak officials and businessmen paying large amounts of money “to deceive the patient and kind [Egyptian] people, taking advantage of their poverty and need by bribing them, deceiving them, and buying their ballots.
“It’s not time to set the clock backward, because it’s against the laws of the universe and the will of the people who revolted,” Badie went on. “We will not be manipulated again.”
Egypt is united in its goal to rescue the revolution, but some figures from the Mubarak regime are still in place and are trying to push the country backward, recreate the regime, and spread fears about the Islamic project in a way that can deceive simple people, Badie added.
He highlighted the Brotherhood’s insistence on repopulating state institutions through elections, so the people can choose whoever is capable of fighting corruption.
Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy and longtime Mubarak minister Ahmed Shafiq will face off in a runoff vote set for 16 and 17 June.
At a meeting at the FJP headquarters in Aswan on Wednesday, Islamist forces declared their support for Morsy.
Montasser Abdel Aziz, Morsy’s campaign spokesperson in Aswan, said the meeting was attended by representatives of the FJP, Jama’a al-Islamiya’s Construction and Development Party, the Salafi-oriented Asala and Nour parties and Salafi organization Ansar al-Sunnah.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
