How the Military Has Won Egypt’s Presidential Election

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It is history with an asterisk. Egypt pulled off the first democratic presidential election in its long history, choosing a civilian head of state to take the reigns from the military generals who have run the country for more than a year. Based on preliminary results trickling in on Monday, the man who appears poised to become Egypt’s new leader is Mohamed Morsy, a U.S.-educated engineer. It is a potentially game-changing choice because Morsy is an Islamist from the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood. After decades of authoritarian rule under three consecutive military regimes, Egypt’s democratic transition could become a veritable success story in the uncertain aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Except here’s the catch: elected or not, Egypt’s new president will have very little power.

Just minutes after the polls closed on Sunday night and just as the ballot count got underway, Egypt’s ruling junta issued a constitutional declaration, placing severe limitations on the powers of the new president. The military had previously promised a full transition of power to civilian rule after more than a year of political turmoil.

Last week, Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, packed with judges appointed by Mubarak, ruled to dissolve the country’s first democratically elected parliament, which the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party had dominated. Then the military announced Sunday night that it would assume all legislative control, as well as the right to appoint a committee to draft the country’s new parliament. The generals also said they would retain full control of the country’s armed forces, including its budget, and any involvement it chooses to have in security measures at home and abroad — provisions that quickly drew sarcastic online commentary from liberals who likened Egypt’s new presidential powers to that of the Queen of England. “I have termed this a coup,” says Nathan Brown, a political science professor at George Washington University, and an expert on Arab politics. “It places the military in a position of oversight, in the short term over the whole political system, and then in the long term over the writing of the constitution.”

http://world.time.com/2012/06/18/how-the-military-has-won-egypts-presidential-election/

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1. U.S. officials 'deeply concerned' by Egypt military decree

U.S. officials said Monday that they were "deeply concerned" by an Egyptian military decree giving its ruling generals sweeping powers to pass laws and decide whether to go to war, issued just as Egyptians finished casting their votes for its new president.

“We have, and will continue, to urge the [Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] to relinquish power to civilian-elected authorities and to respect the universal rights of the Egyptian people and the rule of law,” Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters.

The decree was widely seen as a way of undercutting the Muslim Brotherhood, which on Monday claimed its candidate Mohamed Morsi won a presidential runoff held over the weekend. The edict crimps the powers of the new president, stopping him from overseeing the military budget or declaring war without the agreement of the ruling generals. Government critics slammed the decree as a power grab; some even called it a coup.

The ruling military council gained its new powers in the wake of a court decision last week that dissolved the Egyptian parliament, which had tilted toward Islamists. The U.S. State Department said it was troubled by that earlier step, which led the military council to block the parliament building.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/06/us-officials-deeply-concerned-by-egypt-military-decree.html