(VOVworld) - After four more days, Egypt will enter the presidential election run-off between Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmed Shafiq, a former Prime Minister of ousted  President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry says about 260,000 Egyptian overseas have cast their ballots. Amidst ongoing uncertainties in the country, the election is predicted to be unsmooth.

 

A public poll shows that candidate Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining the upper hand over former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. But this does not guarantee that Mursi will easily win. Egyptian voters are to make a difficult choice between the legacy of a regime, which was ousted more than a year ago during the Arab Spring campaign and a Muslim government, which is predicted to turn Egypt into a tougher and more conservative nation. To reassure non-Muslim voters, Mursi promised to withdraw from the Muslim Brotherhood organization to become a non-partisan president.

Recently, Mursi together with Hamdin Sabahi and Abu Fotouh, the two candidates defeated in the first round of the presidential election, proposed the establishment of a provisional presidential council with Mursi being the top leader and the remaining two being his deputies.  

Despite its advantages in the meantime, the Muslim Brotherhood has not won the trust for its governance ability and the international support.  Tomorrow, two days before the runoff starts, Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court will try 2 cases whose rulings are likely to affect the presidential race. In the first case, the Supreme Court is considering lower court’s ruling that Law of Parliamentary Elections issued late last year is unconstitutional. If the ruling is upheld, the current parliament in which the Muslim Brotherhood occupies half of the seats will be dissolved and the Egyptians will elect again a new legislative body.

In the second case, the Supreme Court will decide whether Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister and one of the two finalists in the election, should be able to run at all. The court will be considering the legality of the so-called “political law of isolation,” passed by the parliament, which bans former senior Mubarak allies from participating in politics. If the Supreme Court backs the law, Shafiq has to give up and the presidential elections will start again. Numerous difficulties are imminent to Egypt’s presidential election runoff.