Muslim Brotherhood Candidate Wins Egypt Presidency

Egypt's election officials announced Sunday that Islamist candidate Mohamed Morsi is the winner of last week's presidential elections, with just over 51 percent of the vote.

The run-off presidential election on June 16 and 17 gave Egyptians a choice between Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood's political party in Egypt, and former Mubarak Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik. Both candidates declared victory prior to the announcement of the official results. Several Egyptian news agencies had also called the race for Morsi on Monday.

Farouq Sultan, the head of the presidential elections commission, announced the results after dismissing two major complaints of election irregularities from Shafik's campaign, Al Jazeera English notes.

Sultan said that Morsi took 13,230,131 votes, or about 51 percent of the total, while Shafik had 12,347,380 votes, or 48 percent. Tahrir square, filled with Morsi supporters in anticipation of the announcement, immediately erupted into celebration, as Al Jazeera English reports.

Egyptian election officials delayed the announcement of the results for several days after last weekend's election, leading to increasing tension in the country and speculation over the integrity of the results. As the Associated Press reports, authorities bumped up security across the country over the weekend. 

The reach of Morsi's power as president of Egypt will be limited by a series recent of constitutional changes from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt's military leaders who have shown some resistance to giving up power over the last few weeks.

Egypt was plunged yet again into turmoil and confusion just before the elections last week as the nation's highest court ordered the dissolution of the country's lower house of parliament after deciding that much of the Islamist-dominated body was elected illegally.

That ruling essentially cleared the way for the SCAF to take control of the country's constitutional rewriting process. They then enacted a series of changes to the country's interim constitution that grant the military autonomy and nullify much of the president's power in the country. Ahram Online has a rundown of the constitutional limitations Egypt's new president will face.

The SCAF has promised to hand over what remains of the country's presidential powers to the winner of the elections by July 1.