Egypt protesters torch candidate's headquarters

[oberliner]

Source: MSNBC

Demonstrators furious that Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister made it into the run-off for the country's presidential election set ablaze his campaign headquarters on Monday, underscoring the divisive outcome of the nation's historic vote.

The campaign offices of Ahmed Shafiq, viewed as a symbol of Mubarak's rule, were set on fire after a group of protesters broke into and vandalized the premises, the state news agency reported. An official in the fire service confirmed the blaze had been extinguished without causing any casualties.

Several thousand protesters took to the streets across Egypt to demonstrate against the first-round result - a run-off between Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi, two of the most controversial figures in the field.

The campaign offices of Ahmed Shafiq, viewed as a symbol of Mubarak's rule, were set on fire after a group of protesters broke into and vandalized the premises, the state news agency reported. An official in the fire service confirmed the blaze had been extinguished without causing any casualties.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47593029/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/#.T8QL_-ZG-ZA

[MindMover]

1. Wondered when the Egyptian people would realize it was more of the same.....

[riderinthestorm]

2. Terrible development for any nascent democratic movement. Violence towards candidates? Bad news nt

[Robb]

3. Shafiq and Mursi were a percentage point apart.

Three points up on the 3rd-place candidate. It's Muslim Brotherhood vs. old guard.

Precisely the outcome predicted by the most cynical of us. There is no unifying alternative candidate for Egyptians.

Not good.

[Lawlbringer]

4. Meet the new boss

same as the old boss.



Or


actually even worse than the old boss.

[HERVEPA]

5. Exactly!

[oberliner]

7. Who is the new boss?

They don't have a winner yet. Isn't it a bit early to make such a statement?

[Lawlbringer]

8. I was being snarky.

The candidates are the former prime minister under Mubarak (which meets the criteria of the new boss/old boss lyric I quoted) and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which you could say is essentially the equivalent of Egypt's Tea Party (if the Tea Party had been around for decades). That guy is the one I said would be even worse than the old boss, an ultraconservative who would wind up causing another revolution. My father grew up in Egypt and though he died 10 years ago, he always said that while Mubarak was bad, the Brotherhood was worse. They're thugs who will illegally stop and search a car driving from Cairo to Alexandria and threaten a man's sleeping American son if he didn't pay up.

But yeah, being snarky on the internet, especially on these forums is nothing new. I'm just saying that if the majority of Egyptians see the Muslim Brotherhood for what they are, we'll have another round of Mubarak's regime to deal with.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,

or

actually even worse than the old boss

[oberliner]

10. I take your point

It would be really sad if things ended up actually getting worse for the people of Egypt after this election. What then?

[David__77]

6. So they are electoral sore losers?

That's what it seems like. Millions of Egyptians supported the two top vote-getting parties.

[EFerrari]

9. Or it was rigged. Can you see a people who just went through hell

to get rid of Mubarak electing his Prime Minister?

I don't doubt that SCAF would rig it.

[oberliner]

11. President Carter (and others) monitored the elections

CAIRO — Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that monitors noted violations during Egypt’s presidential elections but that the vote was generally acceptable and the irregularities won’t impact the final results.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/jimmy-carter-says-despite-violations-in-egypts-presidential-election-vote-acceptable/2012/05/26/gJQAtkMZsU_story.html

[EFerrari]

12. Yes, I saw him there. He very carefully did not say the elections were clean. n/t

[oberliner]

13. He doesn't appear to think it was rigged though

For what that is worth.

[EFerrari]

14. President Carter is a brilliant man. He knows he was there at the will

of SCAF, i.e., a military dictatorship. He tried to encourage the process without calling out the corruption which could lead to more repression, and imho, that was the best he could do.